And War's A Bloody Game
by Aconitum-Napellus
Summary: Stranded with a medical team in a war zone, with the captain incapacitated and no contact with the Enterprise, Spock, Dr McCoy, and Nurse Chapel must fight to survive with dwindling rations and an ever-increasing patient load. (Please note: Although there isn't graphic content, the situations are quite heavy and do include death, but not established character deaths.)
1. Chapter 1

Have you forgotten yet?...

For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,

Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:

And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow

Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,

Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.

But the past is just the same-and War's a bloody game...

Have you forgotten yet?...

Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

-Siegfried Sassoon

The sun rose and bleached the sky white, but the clouds did not lift their veil. Dust still covered everything. Dust hung in the air and dust tainted the clouds and reflected the light like glitter. The dust and the glittering grit had been powdering everything for days, and Christine was sick of it. It fell into wounds and made a sticky mass of blood. It fell into the water and made it undrinkable and fell into the food and made it an anathema to the mouth. It got sucked into the lungs and slowly and mercilessly corroded the soft alveoli until every cough became a spatter of blood. The dust was killing people, for god's sake. More than the bombs and the bullets and the buildings that collapsed at the lightest breath of wind, the dust was _killing_ people…

The war on Paladas 3 was not yet an old one. The fighting had been going on for some months, apparently – long enough to weary the spirit out of every living soul, but not long enough for the population to become used to the sudden violent deaths, the spiralling loss of homes and possessions, the shortage of food and the soul-destroying misery of constant uncertainty. Perhaps in a few years the proverbial _stiff upper lip_ would fall into place and people would carry on about their lives, stalwart in the face of destruction. That time had not yet come. Hopelessness was the pervading emotion in everyone but the fighters.

'Miss Chapel.'

She turned from the cracked window. Spock was holding a cup out to her, his hand carefully held over the top to stop the dust from settling in the drink. His face was half hidden behind the cloth that was wrapped about his mouth and nose.

'Thank you,' she murmured, slipping her own hand over the top with a practised movement before he removed his.

She lifted the mug under her own face cloth and tipped it towards her lips, only discovering as the liquid entered her mouth that it was a warm serving of the ever-thinning soup that had been boiling for days. She grimaced, glad that her expression was hidden behind the cloth. Obviously Spock could glean her reaction, however, for his eyebrow lifted, and he said, 'It is, at least, nutritionally sound.'

'Yes, thank you,' she said with a smile. 'I appreciate it, really I do.'

He nodded briefly.

'Aren't you drinking, Mr Spock?' she asked, her professional concern getting the better of her.

'The soup contains meat,' he said simply.

'Oh,' she replied, wondering just what meat had been found to add to the broth. There was a certain amount of vermin crawling around but – No. She shuddered to think of it. 'I hope you're finding something to eat, Mr Spock,' she said, looking at him critically. They had all dropped weight since the rations had run out but Spock, as usual, showed little sign of difficulty.

'I am finding sufficient nutrition,' he said. He looked past her at the sky and commented, 'There is a seventy percent chance of rain.'

'Thank god,' Christine sighed unthinkingly.

'There is no deity involved, Miss Chapel,' Spock corrected her. 'It is an estimate based on meteorological conditions that cannot be affected. There are constants on many planets. Nimbostratus indicates rain, even here.'

'Then thank meteorological constants,' she smiled, taking another sip of the pallid soup.

Spock raised an eyebrow briefly but did not give a reply. Instead, he angled his gaze upward at the clouds again, a pensive look on his face.

'Perhaps,' he said eventually. 'Inclement weather may suppress the worst of the fighting. But there is little drainage in this place…'

Christine looked out into the wide, debris-scattered square. What had been a beautiful courtyard was two inches deep in dust. All she could think about was how wonderful it would be for something to wash all that dirt away.

When she turned back to Spock, he had gone. She smiled. Courteous as he was, some human pleasantries seemed to elude him in times of pressure. Leave-taking was apparently one of them.

She turned her attention back to the surroundings, reassessing her view of the place. It would take a hell of a lot of rain to wash away all of that dirt. More likely it would just turn it to mud. But rain would mean fresh water, at least. If Spock was correct it would be sensible to set up some kind of catchment devices to replenish their supplies. If they all continued to use the broken water main on that side street then she imagined it wouldn't be long before people fell foul of some local version of typhoid or cholera.

She sighed and moved away from the window. The rest had been nice, even if the soup left a lot to be desired, but there was too much to do. There was far too much to do.

She went through into the inner room where the walls were stronger and so far seemed invulnerable to the constant rumble and tremors of explosions. It was a good thing, too. There were so many people in here that a collapse would be disastrous.

She smiled as she caught the eyes of various patients. It was always good to look cheerful, and if Spock could catch her reaction to the soup above the cloth about her mouth they were almost certain to be able to read the cheerfulness on her face. She knelt down to attend to a sleeping child whose dust mask was askew, and then turned to the captain, who was lying on a makeshift bed by the wall.

'How are you doing, sir?' she asked him with a smile, squatting beside him.

He looked sideways with a glint in his eyes, and she suddenly became aware of just how short her skirt was in this position.

'Not too bad, then,' she said dryly, readjusting so that she was kneeling down.

His eyes widened as if in innocence, and then he smiled.

'Nothing that being able to get out of here wouldn't fix,' he said, and she could hear the frustration in his voice. 'It's driving me crazy not being about to get out there and _do_ something.'

'Now, there's nothing you can do that someone else can't do,' Christine said with a smile, lifting the blanket and carefully examining the blood-stained bandages about his chest. 'You don't want a punctured lung to go with the rest of the damage, do you?'

'No, I do not want a punctured lung,' Kirk admitted. 'What I would like is for my First Officer to come in and report to me.'

'Well, I know for a fact that Dr McCoy has told him in no uncertain terms that he's not to bother you,' Christine admitted. 'So he's probably waiting until the doctor's not paying attention.'

Kirk chuckled, and then winced. 'Really, nurse, how much longer will I be stuck in here?' he asked seriously. 'It's absolutely maddening.'

She held out her tricorder over him and made a show of studying the results, even though she knew they would be no different to the last time she had checked.

'A while,' she told him. 'No, really, captain, I can't be more specific than that. It just depends how long it takes to heal, and that,' she added sternly, 'depends on how much you rest, among other things.'

Kirk sighed and settled back onto the thin mat that was his bed.

'Do you think you can sneak me a padd, Nurse?' he asked her hopefully. 'Not to work – just to – to read. I could do with something to occupy my mind.'

She smiled. 'That, captain, would be more than my job's worth,' she told him dryly. At the look on his face she smiled again. He looked like a little boy who had been told he couldn't stay up late. 'I'll tell you what, captain,' she promised. 'I will have a look around and see if I can find you any _real_ books. Something you can't accidentally slip into work-mode on. Something with real pages.'

Kirk grinned. 'I have always been a fan of real pages,' he said. 'Just – just make sure it's something with some meat, huh? None of these cheap romances for bored women.'

Christine gave him a mock offended look. 'When I'm bored, captain, I don't read cheap romances,' she assured him.


	2. Chapter 2

Outside there was still dust heavy in the air, and no rain. The courtyard was still and quiet, but McCoy knew that would change as soon as the next wave of casualties came in. He glanced at the time. It was late. They were usually here by now. But of course war didn't arrange itself according to medical schedules. He wished to god they had brought more medical personnel down, but most of the _Enterprise_ 's own medical staff had to stay in case of trouble on the ship, and they could only bring down the people they had ferried here as part of the relief effort. It wasn't enough, but no one had expected it to be this bad, and now there was no way of contacting the ship. The absence of the _Enterprise_ for the past month was another worry.

'Goddammit to hell,' he said, bringing his fist down on a plinth that had once contained a sculpture of some sort. The rubble and dust on the top cut into his skin, and he cursed again. Thank god that pointed-eared Vulcan wasn't around, because he would be sure to say something about emotionalism that would just make it ten times worse. He had a knack.

But where was the Vulcan? He had seen him distributing that concoction that some had the temerity to call soup, but that had been a good half hour ago. He flipped open his communicator and said tersely, 'McCoy to Spock.'

After a pause the Vulcan replied smoothly, 'Spock here.'

'Where in hell are you, Spock?' he asked irritably. 'Didn't we agree that we should always be in touch?'

There was the briefest of pauses, and he visualised the Vulcan raising an eyebrow. Then Spock said, 'I took Leeson and Tomlinson out on reconnaissance. I trust I do not need the Chief Medical Officer's permission?'

McCoy grumbled. 'You know you don't, Spock, but a check-in now and then would be good, with Jim laid up and you being in active command.'

There was a sudden crackle of a muffled explosion through the communicator, and a second later a kind of echo as the real noise reached McCoy's ears through the air. Spock said, 'Prepare for casualties,' in a clipped voice.

'Spock? Spock! Goddammit!' McCoy slammed the communicator shut, realising that Spock had cut the channel. He looked around urgently, shouting, 'Chapel! Blake! Thompson! Casualties, incoming!'

There was a flurry of noise as the two nurses and doctor came running.

'Just heard from Spock,' McCoy snapped, grabbing up his medical bag and checking that it was still properly stocked. 'Prepare for casualties. That's all he said.'

'Where are they?' Blake asked, looking around himself like a startled rabbit. 'How many?'

'Prepare for casualties. That's all Spock said,' McCoy repeated to the nurse. 'If Spock says prepare, then prepare. You heard that explosion. It was closer to Spock than it was to us.'

He glanced briefly at Chapel, and smiled. She looked tired and her clothes were dirty, but she didn't seem to be aware of that. She was looking in the direction of the explosion, where smoke was rising in a steady black and grey stream with ugly red reflecting up from its base. The noise of an engine rose above the noise of falling debris and shots and smaller explosions, and then a truck burst into the square, a red-shirted security officer behind the wheel, driving as if the road were on fire behind him. Almost before it stopped Spock was jumping out of the back, a man slung in a fireman's lift over his shoulder, a sticky pall of blood reddening the blue of his shirt.

'Put him down here,' McCoy said urgently, gesturing to the wide, low wall that they had been using as a casualty station. 'How many, Spock?'

'Ten in the vehicle,' Spock snapped. 'More at the site of the explosion.'

McCoy rubbed his hand over his forehead, looking down at the man that Spock was laying carefully on the stone. 'Never mind,' he murmured. 'He's dead.'

Spock glanced at him quickly. Even for a Vulcan, his face was pale.

'How can you be sure, Doctor?' he asked.

McCoy resisted the urge to snap that no man could survive the injuries that man displayed. Instead he said, 'I'm sure, Spock. Free up the space for someone else.'

He gave a cursory sweep of his tricorder over the body, to satisfy regulations if nothing else, but he had been right. There was no sign of life. The man was not long gone, and in proper facilities he might have had a chance, but not here. Leeson was a goddamn social scientist, not a soldier.

It was crazy how this had happened. They had never expected to be thrown into a situation like this. They had come down as part of the relief effort, but they had not expected to lose contact with the ship and end up living like refugees themselves, caught up in the thick of the fighting and unsure which side to fall on. They just treated whosoever came to them, and tried not to discriminate.

He turned to look for Spock, and realised that he was gone. The engine of the truck was rumbling away from the courtyard, and he was left with the ten crying, groaning, bleeding casualties who had been unloaded. It was the quiet ones who worried him and he went to them first, scanning them for injuries, gently putting masks over their mouths if appropriate to stop the dust, sealing wounds and bandaging what could not be treated with his instruments. One of them was a child. The others were all adults, none of them members of the _Enterprise_ crew. It was impossible to tell which side of the war they were on. That was the irony. There was no difference between these people except in who they wanted to kill.

Wearily he kept working on the prone forms with his colleagues, working out gradually that only two of them were actually in danger of death. There were a few broken bones and some cases of sheer shock. He couldn't save the child and he gently lifted her from the wall after easing her pain and giving her a strong enough dose of sedative that nothing would bother her.

'Gomez, sit with her,' he said, clicking his fingers at a shell-shocked looking ensign who was hovering nearby. 'She doesn't deserve to die alone.'

The truck was returning, and he instinctively looked about to be sure the entry was clear.

'Incoming wounded!' he shouted out, making sure everyone was alert and out of the way, and he ran to the truck as it bumped and ground over the rubble into the courtyard. It was Spock who jumped from the driver's seat this time. As his feet hit the ground he seemed to stumble for a moment, and then righted himself.

'All right, Spock?' McCoy asked, waiting just long enough for his nod before going to the back of the truck.

'Only one, Doctor,' Spock said in a hollow voice, following him around to the double doors of the tail to reveal a woman curled on her side, quietly crying.

'I thought you said – ' the doctor began.

'By the time we returned they had been killed,' Spock said. 'I found her sheltering in a crevice in the rubble by using – '

He faltered, and McCoy understood. Unable to see anyone in the mass of debris and blood and bodies, Spock had reached out with his mind to locate anyone still alive. The doctor couldn't begin to image the trauma to his Vulcan mind in sensing that unmasked pain and fear.

'Go,' he said quietly.

Spock looked around dazedly, as if he did not know what to do with that order. McCoy put a hand on his arm.

'Spock, we can't use you here. Go find a quiet place, even for a few minutes, okay?'

Spock stared at him a moment longer, then nodded and turned away without a word, stalking off to an abandoned and half demolished house on the other side of the courtyard. McCoy turned to the woman in the truck, clambering in beside her instead of arranging to have her carried out. He held out his scanner over her, registering damaged ear drums, broken ribs and a broken arm, and internal bruising. He also registered what looked like the signs of rape, some time prior to the injuries inflicted by the explosion.

'You'll be all right now,' he said in his most genial old country doctor manner. 'You're safe now.'

He was lying through his teeth. Nowhere was safe. The best he could do was to patch her up and send her on her way. They didn't have the resources to look after a growing train of displaced dependants from both sides of the war. He adjusted his hypo for a painkiller, and then something to combat the shock. Then he arranged for a stretcher and got her taken out into the yard where the rest of the casualties were lying.

Afterwards, in the quiet when the critical cases were either stable or had gone beyond help, when they had discharged the walking wounded and seen to their own, he walked wearily over to that half-tumbled house to find Spock. He looked down at his uniform tunic, registering the smears of red blood down it. The people here were so close to human as to make no difference, and he certainly couldn't tell by the blood. The top needed washing again. He needed to keep clean for the sake of hygiene, and he alternated between his increasingly stained uniform and civilian clothes that he'd scavenged from abandoned houses. They all did, but he had enforced a strict protocol of boiling clothes clean for the medical personnel in particular.

Spock was sitting in a corner of what had used to be some kind of common living room, and was now used off and on as a retreat by various of the _Enterprise_ landing party. There was a cracked vid-screen on the floor and a number of soft chairs. Spock had, typically, positioned himself on the least accommodating looking one, and was sitting with his fingers steepled before his face. Unusually for him, his hair was messy, and his face was streaked with dust. There was a patch of red blood on one cheek, and his uniform was stained. The lower half of his face was still covered with a cloth.

McCoy stood there for a moment, wondering whether or not to interrupt the Vulcan. Then he decided that sometimes the human touch was needed, and he cleared his throat. Spock blinked, stared at his fingers for a moment longer, and then looked up at the doctor.

'Am I needed?' he asked, still sounding somewhat dazed from the meditation.

'No, Spock, I've done what I can. It's time for a break,' McCoy said wearily, sitting down in one of the chairs near Spock's. 'You know, we should clean this place up a bit,' he continued, kicking his foot towards the broken vid-screen and a jumbled of shattered crockery.

'The general consensus is that we may not be here long enough to warrant the effort,' Spock replied. They had moved on every few days before they had settled here, and had been here far longer than usual. The place was open, relatively undamaged, and still boasted some running water and some power outlets. Their luck was sure to break soon. 'Besides, the food situation is such that it is best not to waste energy on useless pursuits.'

'Sometimes you just need to reach out for whatever comfort you can, Spock,' McCoy commented. He lifted up a bottle and two damaged metal cups that he had been holding at his side. 'Like this.'

Spock glanced sideways at the dark reddish liquid in the clear bottle. 'Alcohol, Doctor? I might have known you would manage to source something of the sort, even here.'

'Even here,' McCoy said with a smile. He didn't let Spock's needling get to him half as much as he usually did. Perhaps there wasn't enough energy for that, either. 'I found it in the back of a bombed out house.'

'You stole it,' Spock said.

'No more than we've stolen power, water, heat, spare clothes, medical supplies, food,' the doctor shrugged. 'If it helps, Spock, the family who lived in that house were quite, quite dead.'

Spock's eyebrow lifted a little. 'It does not help exactly,' he said, 'but I take your meaning, Doctor. But surely you would be better sharing this with the captain?'

Bones shook his head. 'Not in his condition. Best to keep alcohol away from him with the cocktail of drugs he's on.' He lifted the bottle towards Spock. 'Want a snifter?'

He expected a flat refusal, but after a moment Spock said, 'Yes, thank you, Doctor. I think I will.'


	3. Chapter 3

It was dark, and largely silent. A certain amount of fighting went on by night, but Spock had grown used to hearing the sporadic explosions and gunfire, and most of it seemed far away. They could not patrol round the clock looking for casualties. They didn't have the resources. They had to focus on keeping themselves alive, and most of their problems came during the necessary forays out for food and supplies. It was impossible to not come across injured people, and it was impossible not to help.

Spock stood outside in the silent courtyard, looking up into the night. The expected rain had not come, and now the clouds were shredded across the sky, showing glimpses of the dark blue-black firmament, the glittering stars, and occasionally one of two of the planet's five moons, three of which were barely bigger than large stars or comets in the sky anyway. Somewhere on this massive globe there was peace, but it was far enough away in terms of the resources to hand that it might as well have been up there in the stars. It was easy to look up at those stars and think that a perfect peace reigned up there, but Spock knew that was not true. Just there in that gap in the cloud was the star system the inhabitants called Isar, where a bitter world war raged on the fourth planet that would make this one seem like a playground spat. But the war on Isar 4 had no bearing here. It was the bombs and bullets and malnutrition and disease on this small area of Paladas 3 that counted, and those things killed just as effectively here as anywhere else.

There was little point on dwelling on the stars. He could wonder why the _Enterprise_ did not respond to hails or send anyone down, but wondering changed nothing. He could dwell on that woman that he had rescued that afternoon, but – The wounded scream of her minded haunted him in a way he would never confess to McCoy, even after three glasses of that bitter, strong, rich alcohol that the doctor had found in the ruins. _A bouquet of cherries and gasoline_ , the doctor had said in an attempt at humour. Spock could only think how similar the colour of the liquid was to the drying blood on his tunic. Even though he had boiled his tunic clean and was now wearing a faded button-up shirt that had also been boil-washed too many times, he could still smell the rust scent of iron-based blood, and whenever he stopped focussing on external stimuli he remembered the crushed and terrified cry of that woman's mind after she had been violated and betrayed in so many ways.

Knowing he was entirely alone, he gave into an emotional impulse and knocked his knuckles against the wall behind him, the wall that they had laid the casualties upon earlier. He let the sudden sting of pain focus himself. He glanced down at a small weed growing there and plucked it up. While it was as bitter as the doctor's drink, it was not poisonous, and once washed it would provide a little nutrition.

He wanted to evacuate everyone to the outskirts of the city, where there might be more to eat, but he knew it was impractical. There were patients who should not be moved, and while there might be more plants and animals outside the city, there was less chance of finding other necessary resources. There were no easy answers. He did not envy Jim his usual job, the job Spock was currently doing. He had never wanted to be captain, and he didn't want it now. McCoy would not let him consult with Jim, and the constant war against human-style emotion and the chaos of the unpredictable and inexplicable fighting all around them was exhausting.

'You should try to get some rest.'

He stopped the reaction of surprise before it reached his muscles, and turned smoothly to see Nurse Chapel standing a few metres away across the empty courtyard. Behind her small lights burned in the windows, but there was no sound in any of the rooms.

'The same might be said of you,' he replied. 'As a Vulcan I – '

'Push yourself to the limit, and beyond,' Chapel interrupted him. 'I was awake checking on the patients. But there's no need to be on duty now, Commander. We have automatic monitoring for trouble – if the gunfire and bombs didn't wake us up,' she added with a quiet and rather bitter laugh.

'Is Dr McCoy asleep?' he asked, and she nodded. 'And the captain?'

'Yes, he's been off for a while,' she told him. 'It's tiring being in pain.'

Spock knew that Jim refused any more painkillers than the absolute minimum. They needed to be able to save them as far as necessary. He turned with the nurse and walked quietly back to the building with her across the dust-crunching ground.

'Mr Spock, what do you think's happened to the ship?' she asked in a quiet voice.

Spock pursed his lips, glancing up at the sky again.

'I do not know,' he admitted. 'There are various possibilities. We know that the Romulans have been seen in this area of space. We know that they were showing interest in the planet and hoping to exploit the situation here.'

'That's why we offered aid, I know,' Christine said somewhat cynically. 'Help Paladas 3 before the Romulans help.'

Spock looked at her sharply. 'The Federation is not always motivated by dilithium resources, Miss Chapel,' he said.

'No-o,' she said slowly, 'but it sure helps, doesn't it, when they're sitting on untapped reserves they've no use for?'

Spock inclined his head a little with a small sigh. 'It does somewhat oil the wheels of progress in these matters, yes,' he admitted.

'Mr Spock, do you think the ship has been destroyed?' she asked gravely.

Spock looked at her for a moment before shaking his head. 'I don't believe that the ship has been destroyed,' he said.

He did not say why, but he recalled when the _Intrepid_ had been destroyed and every Vulcan aboard had cried out with their minds. He could not believe that if the _Enterprise_ had been destroyed while in close orbit of this planet he would not have felt some sign of that, even if the dying minds had been largely human. He had close colleagues aboard that ship, people with whom he was familiar enough to be sure that he would have felt their collective deaths. Lieutenant Uhura, Mr Scott, Sulu, Chekov. No. If the ship had been destroyed he believed it must have been a long way away from where they were now, and if it had, nothing could be done about it anyway. Telling the nurse the various probabilities for the fate of the ship would not help her, either.

'Are you still on shift, Miss Chapel?' he asked. He did not think she would have left her patients if that were so.

'No, I handed over to Williams a few minutes ago,' she said.

'Then you should be sleeping,' he said sternly. 'You will be needed soon enough.'

A look of weariness came over her face, and Spock was suddenly struck with the impression of how her face had become thinner and her body more angular since the rations ran out.

'Go to sleep, Christine,' he said.

A smile brightened her face suddenly, and she nodded and hurried away. She would be sleeping, he knew, in the smaller room with the more seriously injured patients. She would not get a good night's sleep. It was impossible, with the sense of duty always looming in one's mind. Spock gazed after her for a moment, then began to walk wearily towards the large room where most of the less serious casualties and various personnel slept. They kept the mattresses they had scavenged for the wounded. Spock slept on a folded cloth near to Jim's bed. It seemed the logical place to be.

There was a small light burning in this corner of the room. Spock knelt down on the folded cloth and turned the light so he could see the captain's face. Jim, too, looked thinner, and his face was taut with pain. He opened his tricorder to scan his injuries. His ribs were still broken, obviously. He was still suffering a certain amount of internal damage. It was the myocardial contusion, the bruising of the heart, that worried McCoy. The captain was still weak and light headed, his blood pressure was still low, he still slept a lot of the time. His breathing was regular right now, though, which was a relief.

Spock lay down on the cloth and pulled his blanket over him. He set the tricorder down carefully at his side, keeping the strap around his body so it could not be taken in the night. It was unlikely that it would be subject to theft, but there had been incidents. Then he laid his head down, and tried to go to sleep. He was hungry, but his hunger would have to wait until the morning.

((O))

He woke some time later, alerted by something. For a moment he was not sure what it was. He lay looking at Jim's face, trying to gauge if some difference in his breathing or mental pattern had reached him in his sleep, but there was no change. Then he heard it again – a quiet, stifled sob. He sat up and looked around, until he could locate the source. A woman lying out flat on her back with a thin blanket over her. Her hair was wild around her like seaweed in a current, and she had her hands over her face. Spock quietly got up and picked his way across the room to her, wondering if he could do something to ease her distress, if only so that she woke no one else with the noise.

'Are you quite all right?' he asked awkwardly.

She did not respond, so he knelt and touched her arm, and she jumped violently, before crying out in pain at the movement. Spock regretted causing her further pain, but he asked again, 'Are you all right?'

She stared at him as if bewildered, and he recognised the woman that he had carried away from the carnage of earlier that day. He opened his tricorder and scanned her. It was not a medical tricorder but he had made the necessary adjustments so that it worked almost as well as McCoy's specially designed device. It was then that he realised that she had ruptured ear drums, presumably due to the force of the explosion, and she probably could not hear him.

He touched his hand to her arm, making sure that was not the broken one, and she flinched as if in fear that he might hurt her. He pressed his fingers a little more firmly in a gesture of reassurance, then reached out tentatively to her forehead. He saw the fear widen in her eyes momentarily, but he let a tentative mind touch reach out to her, projecting thoughts of calm and peace, and slowly the fear settled away to a dull ache. He warred within himself. If this were someone close to him, Jim or McCoy, perhaps, he would request a deeper link, and he would do all he could to ease their mental pain. But he could not do that to this woman. He could not reach so deeply into her damaged mind. He was afraid. He admitted that to himself. He was afraid of what was there in her mind. He did not want to see what she had seen and feel what she had felt. So he softly sent feelings of peace into her thoughts until she gradually drifted back to sleep. Then he went back to his own bed and lay there awake for some time, processing the weaving thoughts in his mind that had come from reaching out to that woman.


	4. Chapter 4

With the dawn came the rain that they had expected the day before. It streamed down from the sky, pressing the dust out of the air. Mercifully it even seemed to dampen the fighting. McCoy stood in the doorway just staring into the plummeting curtain of water, glad to be able to lower the cloth from his mouth and breathe in pure air. He hoped to God that the place would continue to be quiet. There was so much work to do. They needed to find more food. They needed to find more resources to feed into the med-generator to keep the hypos stocked for the ever-increasing patient load. They needed to persuade the ones who were well enough that they needed to go somewhere else, anywhere else, as long as it was away from the fighting. They needed time to perform surgery on the more desperate cases. They needed to find someone who could take care of the few children who were currently being nursed and baby-sat by various lieutenants and ensigns.

He jerked back to awareness. There was no point standing here staring at the rain. He needed to do his rounds and check on the patients. He turned back inside and flipped open the screen on his medical tricorder, calling up the patient records he had made and scrolling through. There was no one desperately urgent right now – if anything had changed the nurse on duty would have called him or Dr Thompson – so he decided to go to Jim first. He walked across the room and crouched down at the captain's side.

'Been awake long?' he asked in a low voice.

'Not long,' Jim said quietly. He looked across at where Spock lay, still sleeping. 'Don't wake Spock, will you? I think he was awake half the night.'

'What makes you say that, Jim?' the doctor asked, following the captain's glance.

'I woke a few times. Once he wasn't there. Once he was on the other side of the room with another patient. Once he was here, but I don't think he was asleep. At least, his eyes were open.'

'Spock's learning how tough it is to be in command,' McCoy murmured.

Jim shook his head, but then winced. 'Don't fool yourself, Bones. Spock's known that for a long time. Besides, I'm not completely out of commission. I may not be able to get up, but – '

McCoy chose not to challenge the captain on that issue, because he knew that at least for now, Jim was unwell enough not to defy his medical orders.

'How are you feeling this morning?' he asked, running his scanner up and down over the captain's chest. 'And no fish stories. My tricorder doesn't lie.'

'Then why ask, Bones? Tired. Short of breath. Sore. Fed up.'

'You don't have any business being fed up,' McCoy said gruffly. 'You've got plenty of work to do getting better. I can't be spending all my morning watching over you, you know.'

Jim laughed, and then winced again at the pain that caused him.

'No laughing,' McCoy said in a mock-stern voice. 'I'll get someone to bring you over some breakfast, Jim. I need to go on the rest of my rounds, though.'

'I don't expect you to sit here and nursemaid me,' the captain replied. 'I don't expect Spock to either – but it would be nice to see him occasionally. Whenever he's here I'm asleep and whenever I wake up and he's here, _he's_ asleep. Can you tell him to come report to me, Bones?'

'No,' McCoy said firmly. 'I've told him _not_ to report to you. You don't need it, Jim. Spock's in acting command, and he's fine. He's doing a brilliant job, very efficient, very logical, just as you'd expect him to.'

He saw a stubborn look come over the captain's face, but even as his muscles tensed he settled back onto the mattress again, unable to even begin to rise. McCoy knew how frustrating this was for him. The indignity of bed baths, the painful business of a makeshift chamber pot, the helplessness of not being able to help in a situation when so much help was needed. But he was afraid that as soon as Jim opened a wedge into the business of getting back into command, he'd be issuing orders from his sick bed and working himself up to a state that might kill him. He didn't have the resources here to combat that if it happened.

'Just get better,' he said firmly. 'I'll make sure someone brings you breakfast. Rest. That's a medical order.'

'Yes, sir,' Jim murmured. There was a light in his eyes as he spoke, but the doctor wasn't sure if it were the twinkle of humour or of suppressed rebellion.

He got up, trying to bring a Vulcan-like discipline to bear against the aches in his knees and spine, and walked away. The morning rounds didn't take too long. Most of the casualties were stable. A couple needed to wait until they were stronger before he could work on them. One had died in the night, despite the best efforts of the nurses and Dr Thompson, and was covered in a sheet, awaiting the chance for some kind of disposal. In this situation, unfortunately, the best kind of disposal was complete disintegration with a phaser blast, and a quiet service. There was no way to bury the dead in this concrete jungle, and decaying bodies would only bring pests and disease. He had spoken to a few natives about their traditions and it seemed cremation was a quite acceptable alternative. They had, at least, agreed that disintegration was close enough to that tradition to serve.

Outside the rain was still drumming down. It was a blessed relief, though, to be able to lower the dust cloths and just go about his business breathing freely. He caught sight of Christine standing at a blasted out window watching the rain as he turned back inside.

'Hey, Chris, morning briefing,' he called.

She turned and smiled.

'Seen Spock?' he asked.

'I'm sure he's already in there,' she said. She cast her eye over the patients, then followed the doctor into the little room they reserved for briefings in the morning, and for any kind of R&R as they managed to grab at any other time of day. As expected, Spock was already there, sitting at the head of a battered table with his hands folded in front of him.

'Ah, Doctor, Nurse,' he said. He waited a moment until there was the sound of footsteps outside, and the highest ranking security officer, Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye, came into the room.

'I'm sorry, sir,' he said quickly. He offered no excuse for his slight lateness, which McCoy knew Spock would find more satisfying than a litany of excuses.

'No matter,' Spock said briefly.

'I found a whole cache of food supplies, though, sir!' the man said excitedly. 'Gietz and Tomlinson are fetching them now. I carried back enough for this morning's breakfast.'

'You did, of course, check that the supplies were abandoned?' Spock asked rather critically.

'Of course, sir,' the man nodded. 'Scans showed they hadn't been touched in two months. They were under rubble. Tins, mostly, some dried stuff.'

Spock nodded. A human commander would have offered a _well done,_ or _excellent work._ Spock believed the action spoke for itself and did not need praise.

'Good work, Commander,' McCoy murmured in lieu of Spock's ungiven praise.

The lieutenant commander flashed him a quick look of gratitude, but Spock was obviously waiting to begin. If he had had a sheaf of papers, he would have been shuffling them.

'Stardate 2364.1. Week six, day three,' he said without preamble. 'We have not had contact with the _Enterprise_ in four weeks and two days. We have lost three of our original landing party, including Lieutenant Accardi, sciences, yesterday.'

Everyone's head bowed momentarily in acknowledgement of that fact. Everyone's but Spock's, who stayed looking straight ahead.

'We still have our two doctors and five nurses,' Spock continued, 'along with seven security personnel, two of whom are wounded, and the Captain, who is wounded.'

McCoy clenched his fists under the table, resisting the urge to tell Spock to get a move on. He went through this dry roll call every day.

'Dr McCoy, how many patients do we currently have under our care?' Spock asked.

The doctor leant back in his chair. 'Well, there's Jim and the two ensigns, like you say, Spock. There's that poor woman we brought in last yesterday. I hope she might be able to – '

'Just the numbers, Doctor,' Spock said, a little sharply.

McCoy looked at him in surprise. 'Three of our own, seven critical or severely injured, fourteen with less severe injuries,' he said in a level voice, glancing down at his tricorder to confirm. 'I hope to be able to discharge – um – seven to eight of them today, especially if we can give them a good meal first.'

'I'm not sure about the young male – Arfin, I think his name was,' Christine put in. 'He has a fever.'

'Yeah, I was thinking of him,' McCoy confirmed. 'But the others should be fine to leave.'

'And where will they go?' Spock asked, surprising the doctor again with his veering from logic to a tone of wistfulness.

The doctor shrugged, assuming that although the question had sounded rhetorical, with Spock it wouldn't be.

'I don't know, Spock. Wherever they can go, I suppose.'

Spock sat in silence for a moment, gazing down at his tricorder. Then he looked up and continued.

'Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye, your security input, please.'

'Well, we've got hardly any intelligence to work on,' Ndiaye said rather apologetically. 'We've got largely C.C.G. territory to the east of us, W.C.G. to the west. The W.C.G. seem to have increased their fire power in recent days. I'm getting reports of increased use of missiles and cluster bombs.'

'Yes,' Spock said musingly. 'I'm concerned that this may mean we need to evacuate.'

McCoy groaned. 'Spock, I have seven severely ill patients – Jim included. What evacuation would do for them – '

'Rest assured, Doctor, evacuation would have a far less harmful effect than a cluster bomb,' Spock said rather tersely.

McCoy linked his fingers behind the back of his neck and stretched back against them. He couldn't argue with Spock. He was right. It was possible that some of the patients would die if they evacuated, but that was against a certainty of death if they were subject to an assault.

'There may be a hospital some way to the east, if we can trust our information,' Spock continued. 'Possibly as few as five miles.'

'Five miles in these conditions could be fifteen along safe roads,' McCoy pointed out cynically.

'Or five days of travel with hard labour removing obstacles and detecting explosives,' Spock agreed soberly. 'I fully understand the difficulties of removal, Doctor. Now. We have had no success in getting any reliable news on the conflict. There are no broadcasts that we have been able to pick up.'

'And no contact with the _Enterprise_ ,' Christine commented quietly.

'No, we still haven't been able to make contact with any Starfleet vessel,' Spock confirmed. 'This area of space is infrequently patrolled. We're very far out.'

'We all know that,' McCoy muttered. 'That's why the Romulans are sniffing round like a dog at a rabbit warren...'

'A colourful simile,' Spock said, 'but essentially accurate. It is entirely possible that no Starfleet ship can get through their blockade, if they have set one up.'

'Is there much more to do here, Spock?' McCoy said, suddenly weary. 'I've got patients that need to be seen to. And I haven't had breakfast yet.'

Spock's expression softened for a moment. 'We are almost finished, Doctor,' he assured him. 'Orders for today include the usual. Parties are to move out looking for food. I don't want you to deliberately search for casualties, Doctor. Do you understand?'

'I understand,' McCoy said reluctantly. He knew they didn't have the resources to keep bringing in patients. But damn it, they'd come down here to help, and it went against everything he had ever learnt and stood for to ignore people in need.

'Doctor, if you feel you can't go out without bringing back patients, then stay here and attend to the ones you already have,' Spock said, his voice soft but firm. 'Is that understood?'

'Yes, Spock. Yes, it's understood,' the doctor said with a hint of impatience. He half wanted to mention that recently it was Spock bringing in most of the patients, but he didn't think it would be appreciated, and he knew that Spock would have an annoying but perfectly logical rebuff. 'Now, can I go get breakfast?'

'You can go get breakfast, Doctor,' Spock nodded. 'Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye, Nurse Chapel, you're both dismissed.'

Despite his complaints, McCoy waited for a moment after the other two had left.

'I thought you were hungry, Doctor?' Spock said, softly needling.

'Have _you_ eaten this morning, Spock?' he asked pointedly.

Spock drew a bedraggled weed out of his pocket and looked at it.

' _That_ is not breakfast,' McCoy said pointedly. 'If Ndiaye found some stores, you need to share in them.'

'After the patients have eaten,' Spock said firmly.

'Spock – '

' _After the patients,_ ' Spock repeated. 'Doctor, I would like to talk with Jim.'

McCoy sat regarding the Vulcan. This was the first time Spock had phrased the request in quite that way.

'Talk to him,' he said. 'Not brief him? Not get him worried about resources and tactics and all those things?'

'No, Doctor,' Spock said. 'Just talk to him.'

McCoy considered for a minute, then nodded. 'He wants to talk to you, too. Go on, then. But not for too long. Don't tire him. Don't excite him. Understood?'

Spock nodded, once. 'Understood, Doctor. Thank you.'


	5. Chapter 5

Spock took a moment to process his feelings before he went into the big room that acted as ward for most of the patients. He was not used to seeing his captain incapacitated, and he did not like it, for both logical and emotional reasons. The captain was awake and alert this morning, at least, propped up a little and eating something that looked like oatmeal.

'Spock!' Jim said brightly as the Vulcan walked over to him. 'I thought Bones had banned you from talking to me?'

'Not quite,' Spock said, sitting down on his folded sleeping mat and tucking his legs underneath him.

He tried to keep his expression neutral as the scents of the ward drifted around him; antiseptic and cleaning fluids mixed with an underlying persistence of blood, urine, faeces, and vomit. There was little dignity to sickness, and as hard as the doctors and nurses tried, there were very few resources here to run this place as a hospital should be run. But worse than the scent was the constant mill of human-like emotions, the emotions of trauma and stress and fear, pressing into the air like a mist. He would have far preferred to talk with the captain in a private space, and he was not sure how the human could bear to spend his days like this. He noticed a small stack of real paper books near the captain, though. He was grateful that someone had thought to provide him with that. The captain always preferred real books, even if he had to scan these with a translator device to make sense of them.

'I see you have plenty of reading material,' Spock commented, and Jim smiled. Spock noticed the tiredness around his eyes. The captain seemed exhausted just lying still.

'Yes, Nurse Chapel brought them for me. Bones won't let me have a padd but he will let me have a translator, thank god, and the nurse went off hunting for me. She's a good woman, Spock.'

'Indeed,' Spock murmured, deliberately not catching the captain's eye as Jim tried to make contact.

He sat for a moment in silence, unsure as to what to say if he could not talk about duty. It was a pity that chess had never evolved on this planet, although he didn't think that Jim would be able to concentrate enough for a properly satisfying game, and McCoy would probably berate him for over-exerting himself. He opened his mouth to say something just as Kirk began to speak.

'I beg your pardon, Captain,' Spock said quickly.

'No, you speak, Spock.'

Spock folded his hands in his lap. 'You, Captain.'

'I want to know what's going on, Spock,' Jim said with a hard look coming into his eyes. Spock could see the physiological reaction in him, muscles tightening all over his body, his lips pressing together. His heart rate increased slightly and, Spock noticed, he became correspondingly short of breath.

'There is really nothing to report, Jim,' Spock said in a low voice.

Kirk's eyes narrowed. 'Don't give me that, Spock. I see people being brought in and out of here. Bones told me that you lost Lieutenant Accardi yesterday. So don't give me _nothing to report._ My men don't die with _nothing to report_.'

Spock pursed his lips. Here was the difficulty with having any interaction with Jim. He would insist on being briefed, and the lack of information was as disruptive to his healing as full knowledge.

'Captain, Dr McCoy gave me permission to speak with you on the understanding that I did not burden you with details of command.'

' _I'm_ in command,' the captain said. Spock could see how hard he was working to contain his frustration.

'Technically, Captain, you have been relieved of duty due to incapacity, and I am in command,' Spock said in a regretful tone. 'Jim, really, there is very little to say that you do not already know. This territory is currently largely held by the C.C.G., but the W.C.G. are making gains. We are continuing to treat civilian casualties regardless of ethnicity.'

'Well if the W.C.G. are making gains – ' Jim began.

' _Enough_.'

Spock and Kirk both looked up to see McCoy standing over them, holding a medical tricorder.

'Heart rate elevated, blood pressure elevated, shortness of breath. Spock, I _told_ you not to talk shop with Jim.'

'Bones, he wasn't exactly talking shop,' Jim protested immediately. 'And anyway, he hasn't – '

'I come in here and find you talking about the W.C.G.'s latest tactical moves,' McCoy said in a growl. 'Enough. Out, Spock. No more. Jim needs to rest. Capeesh?'

Spock lifted an eyebrow. 'Capeesh, Doctor?'

'You know exactly what I mean. Now, out. That's a medical order. Otherwise I will charge you with obstructing the duty of the C.M.O.'

'And who will hear the charge, Doctor?' Spock asked smoothly, but he got to his feet anyway, and looked down at his captain. 'With your permission, Captain?'

He did not strictly need to ask Jim's permission. They all knew that. But he knew that the form would comfort Jim, and perhaps also needle McCoy a little.

'Granted, Commander,' Jim replied.

Spock heard the slight falter in his voice, and saw McCoy drop instantly to his knees to scan his vital signs again. He hovered at his captain's side until the doctor said, 'He's all right, Spock. He's just tired. He needs some peace and quiet. So leave him in peace and quiet, okay?'

Spock turned without a word, and left.

The rain was still pouring down outside. As a desert-born creature, Spock had never found rain pleasant. The moisture hung heavily in his lungs and clung to his skin. He disliked the feeling of water running through his hair and dripping down his face. He put those petty personal concerns aside, though. There was nothing he could do about the rain but don one of the stack of coats that were kept near the exit, and venture out into it. He needed to go on reconnaissance, and if he was to do that he would get wet.

'Mr Spock,' a voice called from behind him.

He turned to see Christine Chapel standing in the corridor behind him. She was wearing uniform trousers and a tunic rather than the less work-friendly dress, and although she looked tired her hair was groomed and her clothing was impeccable. It was little wonder that she was head nurse of the _Enterprise_. With the exception of a few moments, he had never seen her professionalism slip. It was also the first time in a few weeks that he had seen her without the ubiquitous folded cloth tied about her mouth and nose.

'What is it, Miss Chapel?' he asked.

She seemed to falter a moment, then said, 'Try not to get too wet, Mr Spock. You're not built for wet climates.'

Spock glanced up at the thick cloud and the drops of plummeting rain.

'I am well aware of that, Nurse,' he said. 'I shall do what I must.'

He stepped out into the rain, and suppressed a shiver as the first drops struck his hair and face. He looked out across the courtyard to see where two of the red-shirted security men were huddled about one of the commandeered trucks, doing something with the engine. It had not taken the _Enterprise_ people long to get used to these archaic vehicles, and in lieu of any other means of transport, they were invaluable.

'Is the vehicle operational?' Spock asked, having to raise his voice as a muffled explosion blew somewhere behind the buildings to his right.

Ensign Gomez straightened up from beneath the hood, water dripping from his over-long hair, which had straightened out entirely in the rain. 'Yes, sir, just checking the engine,' he said quickly. 'These old style internal combustion engines are fascinating.'

'That is one term for them,' Spock said. He found the workings of warp engines fascinating. The workings of combustion engines seemed so simple that a Vulcan child could have invented one given the right tools and some flammable liquid. In fact, he recalled his mother catching him outside with a variety of replicated parts and a bottle of flame oil in his hand when he was five and three months...

He brought himself back to the very real present. What did fascinate him was that this culture still used combustion engines and projectile firearms, despite being in contact with space-faring nations. It had only taken one corruptive influence from one alien group with nothing like the Prime Directive in place to open up this primitive place to the predation of the galaxy. That said, the Romulans would likely have made themselves known whether or not there had been a first contact from another race, and then the Federation would still have had to step in, as they had now, to try to help and gain a positive reaction to stop the planet from being subsumed into the Romulan Empire.

'Is the vehicle ready to move out on patrol?' Spock asked.

It was necessary to go on patrol every day, in part to look for food and in part for reconnaissance to be cognisant of the movements of both sides in this messy conflict. If pressed, the Federation group most closely agreed with the morals and aims of the C.C.G.. They had beamed down at the request of the group. At the moment, however, they helped whosoever they found, if they were civilians or in desperate need, and asked no one for their political preference.

'It looks like the Western Caboli Group are most active to the north west this morning, sir,' Lieutenant Johnson said smartly, turning his tricorder screen toward Spock's gaze and sheltering it from the rain with one hand. Spock saw the black and red marks on the map that showed the magnitude and location of the morning's explosions on the map. As Johnson had suggested, most of them were clustered in the north west of their location.

'You must take care not to extrapolate biased information from few facts,' Spock told him sternly. 'You cannot know that these are W.C.G. explosions, only that they are explosions.'

'They seem to have been mostly launched from W.C.G. sites, sir,' Johnson responded a trifle stiffly.

Spock took the tricorder and scrolled back through the progress of the morning's activity.

'Sixty seven point three percent were launched from what we presume to be W.C.G. sites,' he corrected. 'Twenty two point seven nine from presumed Central Caboli Group. The rest have no obvious launch point. Exact reading of the data is important.'

'Yes, sir,' Johnson murmured.

Spock saw Ensign Gomez exchange a look with the Lieutenant, and smile. Spock had tried to impress upon the _Enterprise_ security chief the importance of teaching his men the basics of the scientific and mathematical process, but he didn't think that the man had carried through with Spock's suggestions.

'I want to proceed out in a loop from here, out to here, and back to base,' Spock said, indicting the route on the screen. It would take them near enough to the current fighting to be able to gauge better what was going on, but hopefully would be far enough removed to not risk their lives. There was a possibility of finding food and medical supplies on the route past what were largely empty buildings, and every day those things became more important.

'Sir, I think this road might be blocked,' the ensign told him, leaning in to point to the street in question.

'Then we will take this road to the left,' Spock said. 'It will still leave us far enough away from the fighting.'

'Are you sure you shouldn't stay at base, sir?' Lieutenant Johnson asked. 'With the captain injured, and – '

Spock fixed him with a look. 'I am coming, Lieutenant. In the rear, please, Ensign Gomez, and keep surveying the area. Lieutenant Johnson, you will drive. I will survey from the front. I assume we have full medical supplies?'

'Yes, sir, all in the back,' Ensign Gomez said smartly.

Spock nodded and pulled himself up into the tired passenger seat of the truck. The thing had seen so much use that the seat was ripped and softly sagging beneath him, but it served. He pulled on his safety restraint and made sure that Johnson did the same before they moved off. The engine flared into life, filling the cab with the noxious scent of burning fuel, and then the truck began to lurch out over the rubble-strewn ground into the destroyed city.


	6. Chapter 6

It was astonishing how quickly hell could erupt in a place which had been, up until now, relatively calm. They had been away from the courtyard for only a few hours, driving short distances and then exploring abandoned and half-demolished buildings. It was difficult and unpleasant work. The stench of death and sewage infiltrated everything. Even with his ability to process and rationalise emotion and to suppress certain physiological responses, Spock found himself holding his breath at times as they entered buildings in which the dead had lain unmoved for weeks, and Gomez was physically sick in one building after he stepped in what turned out to be part of a decomposing body.

They had found almost no food, but there were some medical supplies, mostly basic first aid supplies, but also some drugs that could be repurposed via the med-generator, and various items of clothing for those who needed them. Spock was quietly thankful that they had found no casualties. Much as he had cautioned the doctor against deliberately searching for patients, he could not and would not ignore a sentient being in need, regardless of which side of the battle they were on. Finding no one meant that their resources might stretch a little further and the nurses and doctors would have more time to spend on the current patients. Everyone was on the edge of exhaustion.

Spock looked inward for a moment to assure himself of the time. They had been out for two hours and it would be prudent to start heading back. They had been able largely to adhere to the route he had chosen, but some deviations had been necessary to avoid debris or investigate areas of interest. Their haul today was rather disappointing, but it was an undeniable fact that this area was rapidly becoming stripped of resources. Simply put, there was almost nothing left.

'Johnson, Gomez,' he called sharply. The two men were a short distance away, pulling through a rubble heap.

'Sir!' Johnson responded immediately, straightening up. His fingers were grey with concrete dust that had turned to sludge in the rain.

'We've been out long enough,' Spock called. 'Return to the vehicle.'

Gomez gave one more scan over the pile of rubble, then shrugged. 'I don't think there's much here that we can use.'

He wiped his hands down on his trousers, then both the officers returned to the vehicle.

'I will drive,' Spock said. He wanted to be in control of their return. He never would have admitted it to Dr McCoy, but he had a lingering sense of unease. No doubt this sense was founded on many sub-conscious impressions that he had yet to process, but the sense was there and could not be ignored.

'Gomez, take the rear of the truck again,' he said, 'Johnson, take the front. Stay alert.'

He made sure his phaser was set to stun and was ready at his side, then he swung himself up into the driver's seat. The truck jolted as Gomez threw some things into the back and climbed on board, and then Johnson got in beside him. As he started the engine and fumes filled the air he was conscious of another rumble, the snapping boom of an explosion not far away. He set the wipers to clear the windscreen of rain and depressed the accelerator, and the truck began to jolt across the broken road. As he drove he snapped open his communicator against the wheel and called, 'Spock to Dr McCoy.'

'McCoy here,' came the immediate reply. 'What bad news this time, Spock?'

'Nothing,' Spock said cautiously. 'Is all well there?'

'Yes, Spock, all fine,' McCoy assured him.

'Very well. We're returning now. Spock out.'

He flipped the communicator closed and slipped it back into his pocket, all the while continuing to manoeuvre the truck over the difficult and half-destroyed roads. He still had that sense of impending trouble, and as he drove he tried to analyse everything that he was seeing and hearing in order to work out why he felt that way. Then suddenly it came to him. He was used to a certain amount of noise from the west, and that noise was still going on, but there was a subtle difference. The rain had masked his impression of the noise, but he thought it sounded closer, and a little more toward the north than it had been. From what he knew of the tactical decisions of the W.C.G., that movement did not bode well.

He pressed the accelerator a little harder. The engine revved and for a moment he fought to change gear. Then the vehicle jerked forward again, straining up over a tumble of rubble and back onto the other side. His sense of concern was increasing, but he still couldn't exactly say why. Each time the truck caught in a pot hole or skidded on rain-soaked dust or had to be stopped so that they could jump up and move aside an obstruction, his sense of needing to return to base immediately grew stronger.

And then as he began down the final stretch of street towards the courtyard, hell erupted. It began with something that hit the ground that the truck had just passed over, arcing in from the sky at such a speed that they weren't aware of it until it had hit. The street behind them was torn into rubble, jagged pieces of concrete and earth spewing into the air from the crater that the missile had created on impact. Spock heard nothing from the back of the truck, but he felt Gomez's spike of fear and pain, one after the other, so fast that most would not discern a difference.

'Johnson, check Gomez,' he jerked out, his eyes firmly on the road. The air was alive suddenly with the shriek and tear of falling projectiles, cutting through the rain and causing blinding explosions that melted into plumes of black smoke. Spock tried to increase their speed but the wheels spun as Johnson twisted in his seat to try to see Gomez through the divide.

'I think he's hurt, sir,' Johnson said in a shaken voice.

Spock resisted telling him that was obvious. Johnson did not know that he could sense the man's pain. What concerned him was that the man seemed to be slipping into unconsciousness.

'Can you get into the back?' he asked.

Johnson unclipped his safety belt and began the scramble into the rear of the truck, just as Spock sent the truck careening through the arch into the courtyard. He braked and the truck skidded on the filthy, wet ground and slid sideways before coming to a halt not far from the building they were using as hospital and home. Spock leapt out of the driver's seat, swiftly scanning the area to check which vehicles were available and if there were anyone outside, before raising his voice and shouting, 'Doctor! Here!'

After a few moments McCoy came running out through the doorway, pulling on a coat and shouting to a nurse behind him.

'What is it, Spock?'

'Gomez,' Spock snapped. 'Hit a few moments ago by shrapnel or debris. Unconscious.'

McCoy turned to look over his shoulder, calling out, 'Chapel, Tomlinson! Bring a stretcher!'

Johnson lifted Gomez out of the truck as the nurse and one of the security ensigns came running out of the building with a stretcher. 'Come on, let's get him inside. Head wound,' the doctor snapped as the pair came running. 'Knocked him out but not too bad,' he said aside to Spock. 'He'll be – '

Something screamed through the air and hit at the centre of the courtyard. Rubble and earth erupted upward, seeming to hang in the air for a millisecond before it scattered back down to earth with heavy thuds and light scattering sounds. The rain continued to fall as if nothing had happened, but Spock saw the party with the stretcher blown backwards by the force of the explosion, the male ensign smashing into the wall where they had laid casualties in dry weather, Christine Chapel being slammed backwards across empty space until she hit the ground and fell in a crumpled heap. Spock stood motionless for a second, deciding which way to turn. Tomlinson's had looked like the more severe injury. Then the doctor pointed towards the ensign even as he started to run towards Chapel, snapping, 'Spock, go!'

Spock began to run towards Tomlinson, but even as he approached him he realised that there was little point. He could sense no brain patterns at all. He hesitated momentarily, looking back to see McCoy reach Chapel, then turned back to the ensign, touching his face for a second to assure himself that he was gone, then scooping him up in his arms and beginning to carry him back towards the truck. Missiles were screaming in, hitting the buildings around, and for a moment Spock allowed himself to feel a white streak of fear before processing it and clamping down on the emotion.

'Doctor,' he called, trying to make himself heard over the noise of hell falling to earth.

The doctor turned from Chapel, who was stirring feebly and holding up a hand as if to indicate that she was all right.

'We need to move,' McCoy shouted. 'Spock, we need to move. We need to fall back. Do you hear me?'

Spock tightened his arms around Tomlinson and moved to lay the body in the back of the truck. He had learnt a lot both personally and about humans since his disastrous experience on the Galileo, and this was one of the things he had learnt. If at all possible, you don't leave bodies behind without decent disposal, whether that be burial or anything else. It was obvious that McCoy was right. They had to evacuate.

'All able bodied personnel to assist in evacuating the wounded,' he shouted through the smoke and noise. 'Into the vehicles. McCoy, is the captain safe to move?'

'No less safe than anyone,' McCoy responded, then at Spock's glare clarified, 'Yes, he is. But move Gaston first. He's more in need.'

Something warred in Spock for a moment, and then he nodded. He snapped his fingers, calling to one of the security ensigns, 'Gietz, with me!'

Without waiting he turned to run swiftly to the large makeshift hospital room where Gaston lay. He knew that the man's injuries were far more severe and in need of delicate treatment than Jim's. He was recovering from surgery without the benefit of all the healing accelerators available on the _Enterprise_ , and the wrong treatment was likely to rip his extensive stomach wound wide open.

One of the nurses was starting to corral the less severely injured patients out of their room whilst everyone who was able was rushing into the serious ward, gathering up machines and medicines as well as patients. They had six trucks in the courtyard. It would be tough getting everyone and everything in, but there was little choice. As soon as Spock entered the building he was mercifully protected from the rain, but the shelling continued, projectiles hitting the area with a mindless fury. The building shuddered with the force of the explosions. If they didn't get the patients out soon it was possible they would be killed where they lay, or that the trucks they relied on for their escape would be destroyed.

He glanced over towards Jim's bed. The captain was propped up on his elbows, grimacing against the pain.

'Jim, stay there. You will be evacuated,' he snapped, moving unerringly to Gaston's bed. 'Gietz,' he said, looking over his shoulder towards the ensign. The man had already snatched up a stretcher. 'Help me transfer Gaston,' he said. 'You must be swift, but gentle.'

Gaston was half asleep, whether due to his injuries or medication Spock did not know. It seemed incredible that anyone could be anything other than fully conscious during this bombardment. But Gaston stayed semi-conscious as he and Gietz manoeuvred him onto the stretcher and began to carry him out of the room.

'Jim, _stay there_ ,' Spock repeated as he left the room, knowing that the captain would be on his feet if no one stopped him.

As they stepped out into the open air the rain hit them again. Spock scanned the courtyard, taking in as much as possible. All the trucks still seemed undamaged. Nurse Chapel was on her feet now and attending to Gomez, who was sitting up and holding a rag to a bleeding wound on his head. She seemed to be trying to encourage him into one of the vehicles. The rest of their few uninjured personnel were engaged in the same activities as he and Gietz, evacuating the building with efficient urgency.

They slid Gaston into the back of the nearest truck, and turned back to the building. One of the nurses was ushering the walking wounded out of the building. Some of the patients were turning back to help the more severely injured or carrying equipment or bedding. And then he saw Jim in the entrance to the building, leaning against the door frame, his face almost as white as the building's wall.

'Spock, I need – ' the captain began, gesturing back into the building.

He never finished his sentence, but Spock assumed he was asking for help to carry another patient or equipment from the room.

'You need to obey medical orders,' Spock said, a certain amount of real Vulcan fury reaching his voice. He lifted the captain in his arms, ignoring the human's small cry of pain, and hurried him to one of the trucks, laying him carefully on a mattress that had been dragged into the truckbed.

'Stay there, or I will have you sedated,' Spock said, leaving aside all thought of rank structure and proper modes of address. Those things would matter very little if Jim died.

'Spock, you – ' Jim began.

Spock didn't know if he were responding in anger or any other emotion. The captain ran out of breath and lay there for a moment, trying to recover himself. Spock didn't have time to stay and listen. He left the captain and ran back into the building to get the next patient, and the next and the next. Some didn't need stretchers, and so could be carried by one person instead of two. At last when he ran back into the room he found it empty but for various pieces of bedding and sundries. All the medical equipment seemed to be gone. He stood for a moment, looking around, and something smashed through the ceiling and exploded in the floor, leaving a crater that showed dark red-brown earth at the bottom. Spock was pushed across the room by the percussive wave, slamming into the wall, and for a moment he couldn't breathe. He lay there, struggling to make his lungs work, dazed by something that had hit his head. He could feel blood running down his face, hot and slick. Then he dragged himself up and staggered out of the room, back into the pouring rain.

'Is everyone in?' he bellowed through the chaos to McCoy.

The doctor was standing at the back of one of the trucks. He caught Spock's gaze, eyes widening momentarily at the sight of the Vulcan with blood running down his face, then shouted over to Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye.

'Is everyone in, Derek? I count them all in?'

'Yes, all in,' the tall man shouted back from another of the trucks.

'Is Chapel fit to drive?' Spock shouted. Not everyone had mastered the antiquated vehicles, but Christine Chapel had shown herself one of the more able.

'Spock, you're injured,' McCoy called back.

'No time. Who is fit to drive? I can take this vehicle.'

McCoy didn't question him further. 'All right. I can take this one, Ndiaye, take the blue truck. Gietz, that one. Nurse Shah, O'Rourke, you take the others. Davies, Chapel, Blake, I want you in the back in my truck, Spock's, and Ndiaye's with the most critical patients. All right, _move out._ '

Spock raised his voice over the rain and screaming shells and repeated the order, 'Move out! Move out! I will lead!'


	7. Chapter 7

Shells were still smashing into the building from the rain-filled sky. Spock swung himself up into the seat of his vehicle, smearing blood and rain out of his eyes with the back of his hand, and started the engine. Beneath the pressing need to get out of this area a thousand other concerns milled. Would they be able to find a source of fuel again? Had they managed to bring all the medical equipment? All the food? How long would it take to restock with bedding and mattresses and spare clothing again?

He pressed the accelerator and urged the truck forwards through a place that had been grossly distorted by missile strikes and explosions, bringing up his mental map of the area and picking a route that he hoped would be passable. He would make for the hospital that he believed to be towards the east. They were almost certain to fail to get there before they needed to stop for the sake of the patients, but they needed somewhere definite to head towards.

Behind them the shells continued to fall. Each time they hit, the percussive boom shuddered through the truck and made Spock's ears ring. He wanted to check the trucks behind him but both wing mirrors were long since shattered, and he did not want to risk distracting the other drivers by sounding their communicators, so all he could do was put his head out of the window every now and then and try to catch a glimpse. They crawled along one mile of road, but that was by no means in a straight line. By the time they had travelled two miles he estimated they had in fact travelled less than one as the crow flies. The bombardment, though, had been left behind, and for that he was grateful. He did not know what had caused the sudden attack. Perhaps W.C.G. intelligence had learnt of their temporary base there. Perhaps they believed it to be a C.C.G. hospital. Whatever had happened they had been deliberately targeted, and anger welled in Spock beneath all of his disciplines. They had been doing no harm. They were just trying to survive. They had lost another man due to this attack, and might lose more of their patients by the time they found somewhere else to settle.

The city was a little less damaged as they moved towards the east, but it was still a shell of what had been a bustling metropolis. Bodies lay in the streets and buildings were shattered, fabric and possessions drifting out from the edges of rooms sheared in half by explosions. The rain drummed down and the wipers worked only intermittently. He tried to drive steadily for the sake of the patients, but it was hard because sometimes he simply couldn't see. Then he heard Chapel calling from the back of the truck.

'Spock! Mr Spock, we need to stop!'

Spock glanced over his shoulder, trying to see what was going on in there through the rips in the fabric that hung between the sections. He could see the nurse kneeling down, bending over someone, but he couldn't see who.

'We can't stop,' he yelled back, the truck bouncing on over filthy, wreckage-strewn roads. He was afraid that if they stopped too close to the shelling the W.C.G. would simply alter they target. He didn't know what technology they were working with.

'Mr Spock!' she called again.

Spock saw a tumble of rubble over the road ahead that was too high to drive over. They had to stop anyway, so he applied the brakes and tried to come gently to a halt. The truck skidded a little in the wet and then shuddered to a stop, and he looked back into the rear of the truck. He saw then that it was the captain that Chapel was kneeling over, and she appeared to be doing chest compressions.

'I need McCoy,' she shouted, her voice suddenly loud now the engine was silent and they were leaving the shelling behind.

Spock fought to undo his seatbelt and leapt out of the truck, pelting towards the third truck in the convoy, where McCoy was just coming to a halt.

'Doctor, it's Jim,' he said urgently, wrenching the doctor's door open and almost pulling him out onto the road as the human started to climb down from his seat.

'Wait, my bag,' McCoy said, and Spock reached around him and snatched it.

'Hurry, Doctor,' he snapped.

McCoy shot him a glaring look, but he picked up his pace as he ran through the rain to Spock's truck. The thing shook as the doctor leapt up into the back, snapping, 'Nurse Chapel, report.'

Spock stood with one hand on the tail of the truck, rain streaming down his face as he tried to hear what was going on. McCoy was pulling the portable cardio-stimulator out of his bag while Christine rummaged for an oxygen mask. The doctor ripped the captain's top apart in one swift motion, revealing the bruised and lacerated chest that had been slowly healing.

'Doctor – ' Spock began, but his voice faded.

The doctor didn't look round.

'Spock, get in here. I could use you,' he said tersely.

Spock climbed up into the back of the truck, taking great care of the other patients lying there.

'What can I do, Doctor?' he asked, looking into the open medical bag.

'Your damn Vulcan voodoo,' the doctor muttered. 'I want you to make him hang on.'

Spock felt something warring instinctively within him. At any time the meld was a deeply serious undertaking, and his light touch with the raped woman had left him raw. But this was Jim, and he had no choice. He flexed his fingers and then reached them out to Jim's pallid, grey forehead. The touch instantly nauseated him. There was very little there. There was a dwindling, a palling of energy. Spock felt dizzied and wanted to recoil, but he kept his fingers still and reached out, aware that the breathing and the slow pulse he could feel were not a result of Jim's autonomic reactions, but of the work that McCoy and Chapel were performing.

 _Jim,_ he called inside his mind. _Jim..._

There was a wordless, faceless thing. There was something there, but he couldn't grasp it. Some spark of life, something hanging on, but it did not feel like Jim. He reached further, finding his awareness of the outside world dwindling away as he moved after what was left of his friend. He had to trust McCoy and Chapel to stay alert and aware. He couldn't spare anything for what was outside.

He went deeper down. He couldn't find Jim, the _Jim-ness_ of Jim. He searched instead for those autonomic responses, trying to tap into the impulse to breathe, to make the heart keep beating, to make all the body functions continue. It was like something animal, simple but almost dangerous in its simplicity. It was easy to lose all coherent thought in this place and forget what made him more than a creature. He struggled to keep hold of himself even as he sought after Jim's most basic responses, reminding his lungs to keep breathing, his heart to keep beating. He had to enmesh himself into Jim's mind, become part of that creature-side of him until all there was was electrical impulses, the in-out of breath, the cyclical beat of the heart. It was a perfect rhythm that drifted him away, that softened out his thoughts and made him part of the web of all living things. It was a dangerous thing, but he had no sense of danger, just of the in-out, the cyclical beat, the twitch of muscles, the pulsing of blood.

After a long time, or what seemed like a long time, he could not tell, he started to feel something invasive, something irritating, pulling at him. He began to be aware of noise and of something – his arm. He was aware of his arm, being shaken. The insistent call of another mind that was not dwindled and almost gone like that which had been Jim. Anger coursed through him as he began to pull away, unwinding himself from those intimate bodily systems which now were working on their own. Jim didn't need him. That angered him too. Jim was gone, all but gone, but his body was working and it didn't need him. It rejected him. It pushed him away. He surfaced with an anger that made his muscles want to lash out, that made a sob want to push up in his throat. He opened his eyes onto a world that seemed unbearably bright, his muscles tensing ready to fight, gasping in breath, and he heard a voice saying, 'Spock, Spock, Spock,' over and over again.

 _Spock_. He was Spock. He held the impulse to fight before it reached the stage of movement, but he could do nothing about the tears that were streaming down his face.

' _Spock_ ,' McCoy said again, and Spock turned blurred eyes which gradually focussed until he saw the face of the doctor.

'How long?' he asked, and his voice was a croak which barely made it out of his throat.

'About ten minutes,' the doctor said, and Spock almost recoiled. It could have been hours or days. He felt as tired as if he had been there for hours or days.

'J-Jim...' he said, trying to form the word as a question.

'He's breathing on his own. His heart's beating,' McCoy said.

Spock nodded. His neck felt so stiff it almost did not feel like his own. He saw the cardiostimulator still adhered to Jim's chest, monitoring his vital signs. It would be spurred into action if there were any change.

'Spock – ' the doctor began.

'No need,' Spock said.

'No, Spock, I need to – ' McCoy began again.

Spock became aware that Nurse Chapel was quietly crying, and that McCoy looked more haggard than he had seen him in all this time.

' _No need_ ,' Spock repeated, almost viciously. 'I was in his mind.'

'Of course,' the doctor murmured. 'I understand.'

 _You do not. You do not understand_ , Spock wanted to say, but he said nothing. He stumbled backwards on stiff, bent legs until he toppled against the low divide between truck-bed and cab. He became aware that the doctor was holding a scanner over him, and he shook his head.

'I am all right,' he said.

'Like hell you are,' McCoy retorted. 'That head wound needs looking at, apart from anything else.'

Coming closer to proper consciousness, Spock heard another explosion, and he focussed past the doctor and out onto the falling rain outside. The doctor was busy swabbing blood and dirt from his forehead and applying a dressing.

'We must continue moving,' Spock said.

'You can't drive, Spock,' the doctor said. 'Yes, I know we've got to keep moving,' he continued as Spock tried to get up. It took very little effort to push him back to the floor. 'But you are physically incapable of driving at this time, Spock. It wouldn't be safe – for you or anyone else in this truck. You're staying here. Stay with Jim. Christine can drive. I've done all I can for Jim for now and I need to get back to the other truck. Accept that, Spock. Give me your word.'

Spock exhaled slowly, and then nodded. 'All right, Doctor. You have my word.'

The doctor took Spock's communicator from his belt and pressed it into the Vulcan's hand. 'If you need me, call me, but tell Christine first. She'll be right there.'

Spock sat still with his back against the cold metal divide as the doctor and Nurse Chapel clambered out of the back of the truck. Almost for the first time he noticed the other patients in there, Ensign Gaston lying unconscious on his stretcher; a man he believed to be called Ahshem who had lost an arm, conscious and watching him with dark, quiet eyes; an unnamed woman who he had never seen awake. He let his gaze linger on them for a few moments, then returned to settle on Jim, who was lying pale and silent, his chest moving up and down with shallow breaths.

Spock reached out a hand, noticing idly that it was white and shook minutely, to touch it to Jim's forehead again. He reached out tentatively again, trying to find something of what was _Jim_ in there. His captain was not brain dead. He could tell that. But he was very, very far away. Had he been deprived of oxygen for too long? How long had he been left unbreathing? If he had stopped the instant that Chapel had asked him to would the situation be different now?

He closed his eyes, drawing hard on his disciplines, trying to smooth over the ragged emotions. There was no place for _if_ in the Vulcan mindset, not when the _if_ had resulted in actions that could not be rectified. This could not be rectified. There was no going back in time and stopping the truck earlier, fetching McCoy earlier. He knew anyway that Chapel's expertise approached the level of MD.

He let his hand settle warmly on the curve of Jim's skull, trying to perceive something of the man he knew in there. He could not find him. Wherever he was in there, he was too deep, too gone. He focussed on the open back of the truck again, on the movement of the truck behind him. He could see McCoy behind the glass of the windscreen, his expression tense and focussed, his hands hard on the steering wheel. The doctor was so very human. He became so caught up in the humanity of his cases. And Jim was his friend, his closest friend. Spock could appreciate that.


	8. Chapter 8

The convoy ground to a halt far sooner than they would have liked it. At the head, Chapel reached a blockade of rubble that could not be passed, and they had no choice but to stop. The streets were growing dark, the rain had not let up all day, and McCoy was afraid that if they didn't stop, patients were going to start dying. The morale of every Starfleet officer seemed to have dropped immeasurably as the word spread about the captain.

'I don't know if we'll find enough beds,' Christine said after a weary hour of searching through semi-abandoned buildings. There was more of the population remaining here, further away from the front of the fighting, and in fifty percent of the places they found suspicious, scared, huddled families. It was harder to acquire items and harder to find food. Added to that there was the very real threat of violence from the scared and beleaguered inhabitants who didn't know which side these people were on.

'We need to get people in, get them out of the cold, get them fed,' McCoy said, looking around with an air of desperation.

'In there, then,' Christine said, nodding towards what looked like a four storey private residence, only partly damaged. 'It's abandoned, there's no one in it. I think it's been ransacked, but it's dry and the door closes. There are two large rooms downstairs that we can use for the patients, and the water's running.'

'That's good enough for me,' McCoy nodded. 'All right,' he called out, raising his voice. 'We're making base in this building here. I want all the patients in, most critical first. Nurse Chapel will show you where to put them.'

He looked over towards the truck that Chapel had been driving, and asked her in a low voice, 'Spock?'

She shook her head, the pain obvious on her face. 'He's been with the captain. I haven't wanted to disturb him, but we need him now.'

'All right,' McCoy nodded, patting her on the arm. 'You get those first people in, Chris. I'll sort out the captain.'

He went to the truck and looked inside. It was dark enough now that the interior of the truck was gloomy and indistinct, and so he took his flashlight and turned it on the occupants. He saw Spock still sitting where he had left him, by the divide between back and cab, his hand on Jim's forehead. His fingers looked cramped and white, and his eyes were closed. The captain lay peacefully, breathing regularly, making no sound but that soft movement of breath and the occasional responsive bleep of the cardiostimulator attached to his chest.

'Spock,' the doctor said, since he hadn't reacted to the light. ' _Spock_.'

The Vulcan's eyes flickered open, then focussed. 'Ah, Doctor,' he said, sounding disoriented. 'I apologise. I – '

'Never mind, Spock,' McCoy said quickly. The Vulcan mind meld was such an intimate process that he didn't want to press until it was necessary. 'But we need you now. We need to get everyone in. It's getting dark and cold.'

'Of course,' Spock said, shuffling a little where he sat as if to bring back the blood flow. 'The position is defensible?' he asked, as he became more alert.

'The position is dry and secure and empty, which is more than I can say for a lot of the buildings round here,' McCoy said dryly. 'As for defensible, I'm no soldier, Spock.'

'No more am I,' Spock pointed out. He stretched his fingers and pushed himself to his feet, having to bend slightly in the low space. 'Who must we move first?'

McCoy was pleased at that. He was concerned that Spock had so lost himself in his preoccupation with the captain that he might be functionally useless until meditation had settled him. But his willingness to prioritise other patients indicated some return to functionality.

'Move Jim first,' he said. 'Careful of those broken ribs, but he doesn't need a stretcher.'

He got out his scanner and held it over the captain, even though he knew the cardiostimulator would sound an alert if any of the readings changed.

'All right, Spock,' he said. 'We can pull him towards the tailgate on the cloth, then you take him, okay?'

Spock nodded, and they gently began to move the captain. It cut into McCoy's heart that the previously physically active and alert man made no sound or movement as he was pulled across the ridged metal of the truck bed.

'All right,' he said again to Spock. 'That's it, get him covered as much as possible for the rain. Now lift him up. It's that building there,' he said, indicating the open door where light shone out into the dim street.

He moved alongside the Vulcan, using the flashlight to pick out his path more from over-solicitous care than necessity. He didn't want to leave Jim's side, not until he was safely installed in this new place.

'In here,' Chapel said as they entered the hall, gesturing to a side door.

McCoy hissed in breath through his teeth at the sight of the place. It had obviously been ransacked, as Chapel had said, but it was still evident that this was a rich building. The light fittings that swung from the ceiling were ornate, and fitted with fans for hot weather. The carpet in the largely-empty room that they turned into was thick and plush, and best of all there was a real-fire fireplace with a stove, which would be a boon if they could find fuel enough to light it, in lieu of other forms of heating.

'Well, the carpet's better than nothing, if we can't find proper mattresses,' the doctor muttered.

Spock looked around the room, which had very few patients in it as yet, and carefully set the captain down near the fire, close enough to be warm should the fire be lit, but not so close that it would be dangerous.

'Who next, Doctor?' he asked, turned away from the captain very quickly, as if to shut him out of his mind.

'Let's get the rest of the ones from your truck in,' he said. 'I've got people to bring in the patients from mine, and the rest are less urgent.'

He turned back out into the rain with the Vulcan. At last the deluge was tailing off, which gave him some measure of relief. The patients would get wet as they were carried, but not as wet as they would have got an hour ago.

'All right,' he said. 'Let's get Gaston in, then the two natives.'

'The order is based on medical preference, not personal, I assume?' Spock asked in a level voice.

Something boiled in McCoy. 'Of course, you pointed-eared – ' He bit the words off. Spock had not asked the same when they had brought the captain in first, but then it was quite obvious that Jim's need was paramount, despite any personal feeling. 'Yes, the order is based on medical preference,' he said. 'Gaston first. Come on.'

Spock nodded tightly, and began to help the doctor manoeuvre Gaston out of the truck. McCoy would be relieved when everyone was in, when he could make his rounds and be certain of everyone's status after the uncomfortable truck journey, when he could be certain everyone was warm enough and dry enough and start to get people fed.

His mind turned to Jim again. They were hardly set up for intravenous feeding. They had the equipment, but not the solution. They would have to find suitable chemicals to feed into the med-generator. They would have to set up a catheter...

He tightened his hands on the poles of the stretcher, trying not to give in to despair. It would be so easy to be overcome, but if he gave in then everything would fall apart. His mind turned to Spock, who was coming back to himself, but still enormously distracted by what had happened to Jim. He would trust Spock to command him through hell fire, no matter what he might say to the Vulcan in anger and no matter what Spock might say about not courting command, but there was no denying that Spock was deeply shaken by the full horror of this ugly, visceral war, and even more so by being present in Jim's mind as he sank into coma. He would have to watch him carefully this evening, along with everyone else.

'Doctor?' Spock said, bringing him back to himself.

'Uh – yes, Spock, sorry. What was that?'

'Where do you want Gaston?' Spock asked.

The doctor looked around. 'Put him near Jim. I want all the critical cases together.'

He saw a muscle in Spock's cheek twitch as they passed into the brightly lit room, where Dr Thompson and a handful of nurses were settling some of the patients. It was then that he registered that there was power in the building, and his heart lifted.

'By god, Spock, we've got some good people working here,' he said with a sudden smile.

He looked up to catch Chapel smiling at him indulgently.

'You brighten the room when you smile like that,' she said happily. 'You should do it more often.'

'Well, thank you, Morale Officer Chapel,' he said with slightly acerbic gratitude.

'Ensign Gietz found the power box. I think the owners must have turned it off before they left,' she explained. 'Just a flick of a switch. Some of the units are blown, I think, but they're all fine in here.'

She looked around with her hands on her hips. 'All right, let's go get the rest of them while the rain's eased off.'

McCoy watched after her with a smile as she left the room, deeply grateful for the deep resources of optimism that his Head Nurse always seemed to draw forth. Then he knelt between Jim and Gaston to scan them and assess their conditions. Gaston, at least, was asleep rather than in coma. He was confident that he could be roused when necessary. He lifted his shirt to check the wide stomach wound and reassure himself that the fragile healing scar had not split apart due to all of the movement. He scanned the damaged intestines beneath, checking that healing was proceeding as expected inside, and that no bowel matter was leaking into his body. He checked that the man's kidneys were still processing urine and that his blood sugar levels were within acceptable norms.

Then he turned to Jim, and sighed. The captain looked like a wax work. His hair seemed somehow dull and his cheeks were sunken. Only that morning he had been awake and alert, and now this. He had no way of reaching into a person's mind as Spock did. He had only the facts and figures that his instruments showed him. But all the captain's levels were low, and he could tell from Spock's reaction to the meld that things were not good. It was impossible with this limited instrumentation to do a proper scan, to detect the tiny signs that might show brain damage. He didn't truly believe that Jim had gone without oxygen long enough to start that awful die off of cells. Christine had given him tri-ox the instant his breathing had fallen below acceptable levels and had been giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when he, McCoy, had reached him. Only Spock could comment on exactly what was going on in there, deep in Jim's mind, and he didn't want to push him on that tonight. Best left until tomorrow, he thought. But things could change so quickly in these circumstances, and the thought of losing the Captain when he had been bright and talking and joking that morning filled him with a cold dread.

He changed some of the settings on the cardiostimulator, pulled the blanket up over the captain's chest, and left him. Everyone was tired. Everyone was hungry. They needed to make sure the water was sanitary. They needed to see if the toilets worked, and if not they needed to set up latrines. They needed to find food. The thought of going back to that insipid gruel they had been reduced to a few days ago horrified him. Sick patients and active carers needed more than that. He needed to run a new scan on the pathology of the area and formulate the correct counter measures to stop the almost inevitable sickness, diarrhoea, and illness that came with each pathogen unknown to the human immune system. There was so much to do before he could sleep, and he knew that his sleep would come with inevitable interruptions. But dawn would come again, and they would be able to get a better grasp on the situation then.


	9. Chapter 9

Christine Chapel felt like she hadn't slept properly since they had beamed down to this planet. It was hard to grasp how they had fallen into such a terrible situation. They had expected a certain amount of danger, of course. They had been beaming into a war zone to help those in need. There was always risk in that. But they had expected to be here for a week, at most. They had expected constant contact and backup from the _Enterprise,_ and for relief if needed. They hadn't expected to end up little more than refugees in a city of refugees, caring for their own and for injured natives beyond the limits of their resources and endurance.

She rested her head back on the floor, and tried to relax. She wished she had a pillow, but everything roughly fitting that description had been given over to the patients, and she was glad of that. She would have paid money for a comfortable bed, although she knew that if one were to materialise she would have handed it over to one of the most severely injured patients. Not the captain, who was deep in coma, or even Ensign Gaston, who most of the time was so heavily drugged he was barely aware of his name, but one of the ones who were conscious and hurting. Everyone who had beamed down from the _Enterprise_ had been fully aware of the dangers of war, but most of their patients were natives; not soldiers or fighters, but just innocent civilians who had found war wiping out their homes and their loved ones.

She looked across at the captain, who was still pale and unconscious. They had brought out the intravenous drip and managed to convert enough sustenance into the fluid to fill the bag, but she worried about tomorrow and the next day, and the next. And then there was Spock. Spock had made his bed close to the captain again. He was lying with his eyes closed and his hands clasped loosely over his stomach, but she didn't believe he was asleep. His stance was too rigid. His face was turned slightly towards the captain and she wondered if he were reaching out to the human's mind again. They had almost lost him in the truck, he had been embedded so deeply in the captain's mind.

After a while she made up her mind to speak.

'Mr Spock,' she said in a low voice.

He blinked, and turned his head towards her. 'Miss Chapel,' he replied.

She was not sure what to say. 'Mr Spock, the captain...' she began.

Spock exhaled so slightly that it was hard to tell if he were sighing, but she thought he was.

'I have very little that I can tell you,' he replied.

'I don't want to probe,' she said awkwardly.

Spock shook his head. 'I understand,' he said. 'You are a nurse. You wish to know about your patient – and your captain. But what can I say? Your instruments will tell you as much as I know.'

'But he's – he's still there, isn't it?' she asked tentatively, desperate to be reassured of that one fact.

Spock was silent. He stared up at the ceiling that was almost lost in the dim night time lighting. She watched him, seeing his clasped fingers tighten and then relax.

'I – believe that the man we know as James Kirk is still there, deep within,' he said in his low, resonant voice.

She nodded, resolving to press him no further. It was obviously difficult for him to talk about such a thing, and she had no desire to push him away with her probing.

'You should try to sleep, Mr Spock,' she said.

Spock fixed her with a look, and she read his unspoken words. She, also, should sleep.

((O))

In the morning the rain was gone, but the sky was still veiled with thick white cloud, occasionally torn by various aircraft that flew too high to be easily recognised against the bright nimbostratus. Every time one crossed over, Christine looked up with apprehension. Was it a fighter or a bomber? Was it a missile lower down than she thought, perhaps aiming towards their small encampment? What was it about the last place that had suddenly made them a target for attack? She could only assume that word had got out that they were helping people, and that the W.C.G. had taken offence at that, and that was why the bombardment had started. Because of it Tomlinson had died, and the captain was in a coma. It was merciful, she supposed, that they had got away so lightly.

After the morning rounds there was the usual search for anything that might qualify as food. They had started off mostly sending the security personnel out for this task, but one by one they had been picked off. After the first few forays had returned with injuries Spock had ordered that where possible the security men wear local clothes so as to blend in better and be less conspicuous, but still they seemed to find themselves in situations where they were exposed to danger. Perhaps it was simply the character set of those who chose security as a career. Perhaps they took more risks than the nurses, who were well used to seeing the unpleasant consequences of those more gung ho missions. However it happened, now Gaston and Mabbott were wounded and off duty, Gomez was recovering from a head wound, Tomlinson was dead. They had lost Leeson, their amiable social scientist, and before that two other security men. On a practical front, there were less mouths to feed amongst their people now, but injured people required calories to heal, and they had acquired so many patients that it was becoming impossible to feed everyone.

If only they could contact someone, anyone, outside this hateful place, perhaps someone could send them help. But the governments of neighbouring regions cared little for this war outside of their borders, and they hadn't been able to penetrate far enough into space to reach anyone outside the planet who could help. They were truly on their own.

She returned from the search for food wearied and dispirited, but she had a small amount of plants and sad corpses of creatures caught up in the fighting, all carefully scanned for pathogens that could not be eradicated by processing or cooking. It looked grim, but it was all calories and vitamins and minerals and it could all be used. But then there was Spock, of course. Even in a situation such as this Spock could not put aside his strict principles of vegetarianism, and it was tough trying to find sufficient non-animal-based protein for him.

She took the food into the kitchen of the house, which was intact enough to be easily taken over for their use, and slumped the bag onto the counter. Nurse Davies was there already sorting through various piles of dubious looking edibles.

'What I'd give for a decent cache of tinned food,' he said with a sigh, looking at what Nurse Chapel had brought. 'Thanks, Christine.'

She patted him on the shoulder. 'You're doing a great job,' she told him.

'Aren't we all?' he replied rather cynically, with a quiet laugh. 'Good news, anyway. Gomez is back on duty, so we've got another pair of hands, and Mabbott is on his way back. He was sitting up joking earlier.'

Christine remembered that Jim Kirk had been – well, not sitting up, but at least alert and in good humour a day ago. Things could change so fast.

She washed her hands and went back out to the living rooms that they had colonised for the patients. They had arranged them again with the more severely injured in one room, the less severe in another. She looked in on the convalescent and lighter cases to see that Davies was right. Ensign Mabbott was sitting propped up against the wall involved in a long conversation with one of the native patients. It made her smile to see. If it was so easy for two aliens to get on, why could the two biologically identical ethnicities on this planet not do the same?

She turned away and went back into the other room, where the seven critically injured patients lay. Jim Kirk was still lying silent and unresponsive. Gaston was awake but disoriented looking, and Nurse Shah was patiently trying to get him to eat what looked like some kind of porridge from a shallow bowl. The amputee Ahshem looked pale and unhappy, but he was conscious. She considered trying to find him a book or something else to entertain him. He needed something to take the focus away from his lost limb. Another native, a woman named Shelar, was sleeping, looking fevered and restless. She stepped quietly across the room to her, kneeling down to check her temperature and give her a dose of painkiller that would hopefully help her to rest more easily. Then she turned to look at the other three patients, all of them natives. There was a female who was recovering from surgery on multiple injuries caused by shrapnel, another female called Timor of about fifteen years old, suffering from internal injuries, concussion, and blindness after being flung against a wall by an explosion, and an elderly man who was not as badly injured, but was frail and unwell due to his age. All three were sleeping, and she saw no need to disturb them.

There was a footstep in the doorway behind her, and she turned to see McCoy.

'I was coming to check on our little ward,' the doctor said. 'But I guess you beat me to it?'

'I guess so,' she smiled in return. 'I found some food, brought it back to the kitchen. Then I decided to check in on our patients.'

'Including the captain,' McCoy said grimly.

Her gaze followed his. 'There's no change,' she said.

The doctor walked across the room anyway and took his own scans of the captain's still form.

'I tried to get something out of Spock about what state he's in,' he said somewhat morosely.

'So did I,' she replied. 'But he said he doesn't know any more than we do.'

'Somehow I find that hard to believe,' McCoy said darkly, and she looked at him, startled.

'What makes you say that, Doctor?'

He smiled then, and shrugged. 'I don't know, really, Chris. I'm not being fair. I just find it hard to deal with the thought that Spock's been there, been inside Jim's mind, and that he can't tell us any more than we already know.'

'Do you think – Well, do you think he could help bring him back?' she asked. 'I've read reports of mind meld being used successfully in coma to bring a patient back. Do you think – ?' She trailed off. It seemed too large a hope.

McCoy shook his head. He put his arm around her shoulders and led her out of the room.

'Come on with me, Chris,' he said. 'There's plenty of evidence that people in comas can sometimes hear what's going on, and I don't want Jim listening to this.'

He took her up a flight of stairs and into a little room that had been left largely untouched. It seemed that scavengers weren't much in need of arm chairs, at any rate. He sank down in one and Christine dropped into another, putting her feet up wearily on a small table nearby.

'I suppose it's too early in the day to have any of that drink you found,' she said with a smile.

He laughed quietly in return. 'Far too early. Besides, I lost that. Didn't seem like the first priority in the evacuation.'

'Maybe this place has got a wine cellar,' Christine suggested idly. 'Do they have anything like grapes on this world, do you know?'

The doctor lolled in his chair. 'You know, we should check that out,' he said. 'What a boon that would be. Maybe there's a cellar full to the gills with Southern Comfort, and we just haven't looked yet. They seem to have paralleled Earth on every other angle so far. At least with the guns and the missiles and the bombs and the planes...'

'That's enough of that,' Christine told him crisply. 'We were talking about the captain. Maudlin about the war won't help. But do you think Mr Spock could help the captain?'

McCoy shook his head. 'Honestly, Chris, I think if he could I'd have to be holding him back from doing it. Melding isn't an easy thing. It poses huge issues for both sides. Blood pressure changes, pressure on the nerves, electrical impulses. And that's not even mentioning the incredible personal toll, the rawness of letting down every barrier and merging your mind with another person. When Spock melded with Jim in the truck I was afraid he'd gone too far. I was afraid we wouldn't be able to pull him back. Coma melds are something for highly skilled Vulcan healers. Hell, Spock hadn't even melded with a human until we had Van Gelder in the sick bay at Tantulus.'

'He's familiar with the captain's mind, isn't he?' she asked tentatively, even as she digested all that the doctor had said. 'It's not like he's a stranger, not like Van Gelder?'

'Yes, he's familiar,' the doctor said tiredly. He suddenly looked old to Christine, and she felt sorry for the stress he was under. 'I just – I don't know, Christine. I can't tell him to try. I don't want to tell him to try. It's too much to ask of anyone.'

'Even for the captain?' she asked softly.

'Even for Jim.'


	10. Chapter 10

Spock felt as if he had not slept for weeks. He was capable of going without sleep for a number of days, a number of weeks even, if necessary. However, he had slept last night, and the night before, and he still felt as if he had not slept for weeks. They had been installed in this new place for five days now. Every day he woke up next to the captain and before he opened his eyes he reached out tentatively with his mind to see if he could sense any kind of consciousness there. There never was. Even after just five days the captain had lost more weight and muscle tone. Every day his limbs had to be moved, and his position changed to prevent bed sores. He tried to think of the coma as a state akin to the Vulcan healing trance, a place of rest in which the body could recuperate, but it was hard to see it in that way when every day he saw the captain becoming less of the man he had been and more of a skeletal body hanging on to life for no reason other than the beating of his heart and the moving of his lungs.

He came back into the critical room after the morning briefing. He did not want to admit to the tiredness that he felt, but he seemed to have little energy for anything but sitting and talking, poring over the details on his tricorder and padd, giving orders but not acting on them. It was a lack of nutrition, he supposed. They had all been taking shifts at the hard labour of trying to clear the road ahead, in case they were compelled to move on. The blockages could be removed with a phaser, but it would take a phenomenal amount of energy to vaporise all of that matter, and they did not have energy to waste if it could be done manually, so Spock had ordered it to be done manually. With the extra activity, though, came extra appetite. There was little protein here to eat that did not come from meat, and he would not bend to becoming an omnivore in this situation. Here, where the scent of blood and flesh was so often prominent, the idea of eating meat was even more abhorrent than usual. He understood the logic of eating whatever one could find, but he would not do it. Not yet.

He went over to Jim, as usual, and knelt by him, first checking his vital signs and then reaching out carefully with his mind to see if he could sense anything of his captain inside that enclosing skull. There was nothing. He knew that sometimes people in comas were aware of what was going on around them, but not Jim. He seemed to be in an endless and dreamless sleep, and without the constant attention of his carers, he would die that way.

He sighed very softly, his head bowed, and readied himself to stand up. A hand on his shoulder stopped him. He looked around to see Maia, the woman he had rescued some days ago, standing behind him with a sorrowful expression. Her latent pain and fear flowed into him through her touch, but he was careful to remove her hand tactfully, by standing up and a little away from her. He looked directly at her and asked, 'How is your hearing today, Maia?'

She could not read his lips, of course. Even if she had become skilled in that it would not help because the movement of his lips differed from the words she heard from his translator; so it was obvious when she smiled and said, 'Much better, Mr Spock,' that she was telling the truth.

Her arm was bound up over her chest with a sling and she moved with the pain of her broken ribs as they walked out of the room. Patients were trying to sleep, and they did not want to disturb them. She had been in the less critical room for a few days now. If only they had a functional bone knitter down here she might have been discharged, but that kind of equipment was beyond this situation.

He glanced at her curiously as they stepped out over the threshold of the front door, into the street outside. She made a small, half-hidden movement of her hand across her exposed neck, and then as she noticed him looking she clenched her fist and dropped it to her side, looking frightened.

'You are Western Caboli,' he said prosaically.

Her face flushed, and she looked about swiftly, as if working out where to run.

Spock put a hand on her arm.

'I would have saved you regardless,' he said. 'You are not a soldier. I would have helped any sentient being with your injuries.'

Her relief flooded him like a wave, and he strengthened his mental shields. It cost effort to constantly shield against the human and human-like emotion around him, but it cost effort to always be exposed to it, as well.

'We have Western Caboli among our patients, although the majority are Central Caboli,' he said. He looked at her directly. 'It was the Central Caboli who raped you.'

She blanched at that and seemed to shrink a little.

'I am telepathic,' he explained gently. At her bewildered look he explained, 'I have the ability to sense others thoughts and feelings, and I felt your distress. But it is no more than Dr McCoy's instruments have told him. He must have spoken to you about it.'

'Yes, as doctor to patient,' she murmured.

She was silent for a while, looking out at the street before them. It was a wide street planted with trees up the sides, but on the opposite side from their commandeered house a lot of the trees were blasted and leafless. The building opposite had had its front blown away, and the rooms ended abruptly, raggedly, disgorging their contents into the air and over the street below. He looked into those broken off rooms and wondered abstractedly about their structural integrity, and whether an exploration could be made for useful items.

'It was the Central Caboli soldiers,' she murmured bitterly after a long period of silence. 'Always the soldiers. They come through and take everything they want...'

Spock had heard similar lamentations about the Western Caboli forces, and more frequently, since they had encountered more Central Caboli people in their stay here.

'There is little to distinguish one side from the other, except by your religion,' he pointed out.

She shuddered, and he got the sense that she wanted to argue, but she didn't speak.

'Yes,' she said after a while. 'Yes, they're all the same. Men fighting. Children and women and the sick and the old suffering. But the men keep on fighting and taking and screaming of injustice...'

'It is not logical.'

She looked up at him then, utterly startled.

'When is war ever logical?' she asked him.

Spock blinked. These people were human in almost every respect. They had no understanding of alien cultures.

'I come from a planet called Vulcan,' he explained. 'Two millennia ago my people were passionate, vicious. There was warfare. There was rape. They ate animal flesh and tortured and killed their enemies. Our planet was ripped apart by such hatred as you could not imagine. Eventually a man called Surak came to prominence. He was the father of our modern civilisation. He advocated the suppression of passion and the dominance of logic as the only acceptable way to live. Eventually his cult grew to become a world-wide force. We put away emotion and live only by logic and rationality.'

'Everyone?' she asked in wonder.

'Those who did not agree, left,' Spock said simply. 'It was known as the Sundering. We had developed crude space flight by that time, and they left to seek another home. They became those you know as the Romulans.'

She looked confused again, and Spock recognised that although the Romulans were hovering about the planet like birds of prey, it was quite possible that the average citizen had no idea of their presence and danger. He would not tell her. She did not need anything else to distress her in this very real, very immediate war.

'No emotions,' she said. 'No love? No sadness?'

Spock pressed his lips together. These issues were so complex. What did he feel for his parents, for Jim, for McCoy, if not love? What did he feel now for Jim, if not sadness? He processed his emotions. He kept them from influencing his decisions and his actions. He acted on logic. But it was true that the emotions were there; very deep, very controlled, but there.

'Logic is the foundation of our philosophy,' he said simply.

She looked at him as if she did not believe him. Spock avoided her gaze, looking up at the thick white cloud and wondering if it held rain, or if the place would dry out and the terrible silica dust would be whipped up again.

'Where will you go when you are healed?' he asked her.

Her face became empty. 'I don't know,' she said. 'Not back that way,' she said, turning her head towards the west. 'But where is there for me?'

The words were very close behind Spock's teeth. _You could plead asylum and we could take you off this planet._ He did not speak them, though. They couldn't offer asylum to every person affected by this war. The ship did not have the capacity, and the planet needed its people.

'There are countries which accept refugees,' he said. He had researched these things before they beamed down, ascertaining which countries were open to refugees and how they were treated when they arrived. It was disappointingly true that many places either did not take them or did not treat them well, but perhaps being treated as a second class citizen in another country was better than being open to rape and murder and injury in one's own.

'This is my home, but I have no home,' she said in a broken voice.

'Do you have family?'

'Not any more,' she said simply, and then she cried.

Spock stood still, uncertain as to how to react. The captain would have held her in his arms and soothed her. He moved one arm momentarily, but then dropped it back to his side. McCoy had put it most succinctly one day when he had opined, _You're not a hugger, are you, Spock?_ He stood still at her side, looking out into the street, as she cried. And then there was a flurry of footsteps in the hallway behind them and Nurse Shah came out and enfolded the woman in her arm, shooting Spock a censorious glare.

Spock lifted an eyebrow, and turned back inside the building. He felt he had a connection with this woman since he had dragged her out of the rubble and bodies and felt the anguish in her mind, but still he could not break through his self-imposed disciplines to hug her. He wondered how he would react should Jim awaken from his coma. Would he able able to demonstrate his logical relief and gladness to his captain? But with Jim he knew it would not matter if he could not. Jim did not attempt to elicit emotional displays from him to prove that he did experience emotion. He was not as obsessed as many humans were with breaking down the Vulcan character and forcing him to _fit in_.

He went up to one of the quiet rooms on the upper floors and took out his padd, linking it with his tricorder and carefully studying that morning's readings and reports. The W.C.G. were still some way behind them, thankfully, fighting C.C.G. forces that had arrived afresh. The area to the east of them was largely quiet – but for how long? If they did reach the hospital that was supposed to be in the east, would it still be there? Would it be able to help? Would they encounter anyone with the resources to aid them in contacting off-planet assistance?

He looked through the list of active duty personnel again. If he could send two men out on foot perhaps they could reach this hospital in as little as a few hours. What of the risk? Could they spared? Really the risk was no more than sending people out searching for food or resources, and they would be gone no longer than a day, if all went well. But if all did not go well... It was highly possible they would be killed or injured or not be able to gain the help needed.

Spock resisted sighing. He had not lied when in the past he had said he did not court command. He would do his job, but he vastly preferred data and discoveries to risk analyses and ordering men. If he had followed his father's wishes and attended the Vulcan Science Academy he would have avoided all this. He imagined an alternative version of himself, sitting at a desk somewhere on Vulcan, doing research, but inwardly he shuddered. No. The occasional stint of taking command was acceptable payment for the galaxy-wide spread of discovery and fascination that his job held.

He tapped his finger on the padd, considering the names there. Of all of the security personnel, Ensign Gietz had shown himself the more capable, the more inventive, and particularly good at stealth. Then there was Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye. He did not like the idea of sending out his most senior security officer, but Ndiaye was the most senior for a reason. He was good at his job. He was calm and level headed in a crisis. He was intelligent and resourceful.

Spock made up his mind, opened his communicator, and called the men in.


	11. Chapter 11

For Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye it was good to be doing something. It wasn't as if their forays out for food and supplies weren't doing something, but it was a cyclical process in which one could feel one wasn't getting anywhere. They found food, and the food was eaten, and they had to find more. This was a sortie out in one direction, aiming towards a definite goal. If they could reach the hospital – or indeed any official outpost – they might be able to get out of this hellish place.

He paused momentarily as he packed his backpack. It was all very well for him and his Starfleet colleagues to get out of here, but what about all those poor souls left behind? It wasn't good enough to beam in like guardian angels to dispense medical aid to the injured. They needed to do more. They needed to stop the ridiculous fighting before more people were injured. He wavered between wanting to annihilate all of the men who were causing this pain, with their own bombs and shells so that they felt the same pain that they were causing, and wanting to simply beam all weapons out of this area of the planet. In that case, though, they would probably fight with tooth and fists.

It felt like a hopeless cause. They needed to find these people while they were children, before they became radicalised and full of hate. It was perfectly possible to live alongside people of different creeds. Hell, it was hard sometimes working alongside Spock, with his very different philosophy of life, but that didn't mean he, Ndiaye, was reduced to trying to kill him. They just got on with it. In this modern galaxy it was easy to simply pluck off all of those who wanted it and take them to another planet, to start up a new life, but wasn't that too simple a solution? Didn't that cause problems of its own? Wasn't it better to learn to live together, as he and the rest of the human ship complement did with Spock?

His thoughts turned to the Romulan warships circling the planet, that were in all likelihood stopping the _Enterprise_ or any other Federation vessel from evacuating them from this place. Hadn't that started from the same kind of issue? Weren't the Romulans born of the same petty warfare? Even on a planet many parsecs from Vulcan they weren't able to stop their warlike ways. Instead of learning to control their aggression, as the Vulcans had, they had simply run away, and learnt nothing.

He sighed and carried on pushing things into his backpack. He didn't need to take much, but it was good to be prepared. Enough food for a day. Water. Medical kit. Tricorder. Communicator. Phaser. He could have opted for a phaser rifle, but they weren't going out to wage war, and if they could get to where they were going without firing a shot, he would consider the mission a success.

He looked across at Ensign Gietz, who was packing just like him.

'How are you doing, Zelig?' he asked, poking a finger into the top of the man's bag and spying on the contents.

'Just fine without your help,' Gietz said in mock indignation. 'You look after your own packing.'

Ndiaye laughed, and turned back to his own pack. He cinched the cords tight and strapped down the top.

'I've looked after mine already. Maybe you should have brought your mama to pack yours, eh?'

Gietz carefully pushed a flask of water into a side pocket, and shut up the bag as Ndiaye had.

'If we're going to get into _your mother_ jokes, you'd better watch out, Derek, because I've got a thousand.'

Ndiaye laughed again. It was nerve-wracking going out on a mission like this, and it was good that he and Zelig could joke about it. The lad would follow his orders instantly and to the letter, but that didn't mean they couldn't be friends.

'Don't try me, Zelig,' he said. 'We invented _yo' mama_ jokes in Senegal.'

'They were invented in the old US!' Gietz countered indignantly. 'Unless you listen to Pavel Chekov, of course, because everything was invented in Leningrad to him.'

Ndiaye glanced out of the window. Rain was dropping again in a slight but steady mist. It wasn't ideal weather for starting out on a mission like this, but there was little choice. Spock was unlikely to tell them to wait until the weather cleared, and he would be right not to. They had everything they needed. They were wearing native dress, with long rainproof coats just as the natives wore. They were a little ripped, and Ndiaye's was blood-stained, but they would suffice.

'Shall we go then, little boy?' he asked. Gietz was no more than twenty, and it always made him smile when Ndiaye called him _little boy._

'All right, old man,' Gietz grinned.

Ndiaye, at twenty-seven, made a play of bringing his stiff limbs back to life and straightening his sore spine. Then he clapped Gietz on the back and gestured out of the room.

'Then let's go and take our leave of the commander,' he said.

They tramped downstairs looking for the Vulcan. Spock was in the patients' room, standing near the captain, just looking down at him. Ndiaye glanced at Gietz momentarily. It was easy to drop the happy expression from his face when they walked into that scene, with patients lying injured and the captain unconscious.

Ndiaye cleared his throat. 'Commander Spock, we're ready to move out,' he said quietly.

Spock turned around, looking momentarily distracted until he focussed on the two security men. He nodded soberly.

'Very well, Commander,' he nodded. 'Be sure to call in at regular intervals.'

Anyone else would have wished them luck, but the Vulcan merely watched them walk out of the door. For Ndiaye, Spock's lack of words were an indication of his trust in them. He did not feel the need to go through their planned route with them, or remind them of strategies or targets. He did not wish them luck because he did not believe in it. Instead, he believed in their skill and intelligence.

'Couldn't they have arranged a little sun?' Gietz asked as they walked down the steps into the rain.

'Do you know, I think I haven't seen the sun since we beamed down to this planet,' Ndiaye remarked. He looked up towards the clouds then quickly ducked his head down again as he got a face full of rain. 'I'm starting to believe it doesn't exist.'

'I'm getting a little homesick for our sun,' Gietz admitted. 'How long is it since you were back on Earth, Derek?'

'I had leave two months ago,' Ndiaye admitted.

Gietz made a face. 'Not fair. I haven't been home for a year.'

'Maybe when you're a bit older, little boy,' Ndiaye grinned, and Gietz elbowed him in the side.

Ndiaye tutted. 'One day my men will learn to respect me,' he sighed. He turned to the left. 'Come on, Zelig.'

Gietz pulled out his padd to review the route they had planned. Ndiaye leaned in toward the shorter man, wondering how much these streets had changed since that plan had been drawn. At least on foot it would be easier to get through rubble and road blocks than in the trucks. It would be hard going, though.

'Set your tricorder for life signs and weapons signatures,' he told the ensign, setting his own for the same. 'Stay alert. All right. Let's go.'

They began to trudge up the rubble covered street. Dust and debris had been crushed and turned into mud by the constant rainfall. The first obstacle was a tree that had been felled across the street. It was harder to scramble through the thorny branches than it would be to climb over a pile of fallen brick or stone, but Ndiaye resisted Gietz's suggestion of phasering the thing out of existence. When you didn't know everything about the local culture it was best to leave things well alone. They could find anything from the trees being sacred, to the disturbance causing a precariously balanced piece of damaged building to collapse.

'Damn all trees to hell,' Gietz muttered as his jacket caught and the rain shook from the branches.

'If you could eat it you'd be happy,' Ndiaye pointed out.

'If I could eat it, I'd be a sheep.'

They pushed through the branches, and trudged on, always trying to stay alert. They detected many life signs but few indications of weapons. Most of the life signs seemed to be people huddled together inside the buildings, but occasionally they saw someone out in the street or standing in a doorway, and they approached with caution until they could be sure there were no weapons and little risk of harm. Ndiaye feared coming across someone who needed medical help. From a selfish point of view, they needed to be able to press on, and if there were anyone badly injured they would be duty bound to do their best to help. They couldn't walk past suffering any more than McCoy could, but delays like that could set them back for hours or days.

'We should try to get on as quickly as possible,' he said yet again to Gietz as the younger man hesitated at the sight of a hungry looking child. 'We don't have food for her anyway. Come on.'

He tugged at Gietz's arm, and the man moved on reluctantly.

'When we get back to the ship I'm going to send down twenty tons of food relief parcels,' the German vowed.

'The ship doesn't _have_ twenty tons of food relief parcels,' Ndiaye reminded him.

'But we have to do _something_ ,' Gietz insisted.

'We are doing something. We've had over a hundred people pass through our care, and the worst are still there,' Ndiaye said patiently, his eyes on the street up ahead, always alert for danger. 'When we get back to the ship we'll put all this down in our reports and they'll send more help. Sometimes you can't do everything yourself, you know.'

'Maybe we can try,' Gietz muttered.

'Well, we're doing what we can right now, little boy,' Ndiaye reminded him. 'If we get to this hospital maybe we can call the ship, or some other authority. If we can do that we can report the real situation here and get more help. And if we can get the captain there – '

'Do you think the hospital will be able to do anything that Dr McCoy can't?' Gietz asked pensively. 'We're talking twentieth century technology here.'

'I don't know, but they'll be warm and safe and they'll have supplies. People don't bomb hospitals,' Ndiaye said staunchly.

They carried on largely in silence for some way. It was tiring work walking over ground that was strewn with debris, often slippery, with mud that clung to their boots, climbing over piles of unstable rubble that were sometimes as much as two storeys high, sometimes having to change their route entirely to avoid blockages or places where life signs registered alongside large caches of weapons. It might be that those weapons were in the hands of people who wished them no harm, but they did not want to risk it.

'We should check in with the commander,' Gietz said after a while. He glanced up at the sky and said, 'And get some shelter for a few minutes to eat some lunch too.'

'Always thinking of your stomach,' Ndiaye grinned.

'An army marches on its stomach,' Gietz pointed out.

'A poor army we are, then, two of us, and so used to small rations we've barely got stomachs left.' Ndiaye looked about and nodded towards a building to the left with a wide, deep porch on the front of it. 'Let's go in there. Looks like good shelter, and I don't think the building's about to collapse on top of us, either.'

'There's a lot less damage up this end of the city,' Gietz commented, and Ndiaye nodded. Further from the ragged front line, buildings were more intact, there was less rubble in the streets, and although there were few people, those they saw looked less traumatised.

They huddled into the porch and brought out some food. It was a strange meal of bits scavenged from multiple sources, but at least it was food. Ndiaye took out his communicator and opened it up.

'Ndiaye to Commander Spock,' he said.

The reply was almost instant. 'Spock here.'

'Reporting in, Commander,' Ndiaye said crisply. 'We've come two point three miles as the crow flies, about five miles on foot. We're stopping for a short break, then we'll move on again. We haven't encountered any resistance yet. Only seen civilians, but there aren't many people left here. The systematic damage seems to be getting less the further west we travel.'

'Acknowledged,' Spock said in a level voice, leaving Ndiaye wondering exactly what the Vulcan was making of that information. Just sometimes, he had to admit, it would be nice if he said _good job_ or indicated some kind of emotional response to information.

'We'll continue to scan and look out as we travel,' Ndiaye concluded. 'I'll check in again in two hours. Ndiaye out.'

'Out,' Spock acknowledged, and the communication was cut.

Ndiaye looked across at Gietz, and shrugged. 'Well, I think he was pleased,' he said with a laugh.

They sat for a few more minutes, finishing their food and taking a drink, before they hitched their bags back onto their backs, and went back out into the drizzling rain.


	12. Chapter 12

Spock shut his communicator after speaking to Ndiaye, and put it back on his hip. It crossed his mind that they would need to make sure of the power supply in this place. So far they had used it only for lighting, since other circuits did not seem to be working, but the batteries in the communicators and tricorders, the med-generator, and other equipment, were not inexhaustible. It was quite possible that they would be here long enough to need to make use of that power, even if it meant somehow rigging their converters up to the lighting system.

He glanced out of the window to see that the rain was still falling. He wasn't sure which was preferable, the dust or the rain. For the humans, certainly, the rain was better. Their lungs were not as well adjusted to dust as his and were far better adapted to wet weather. As for Vulcan lungs, although the silica rich dust had been harmful to him as well, he found the constantly moisture-filled air far harder to deal with. He could not keep it out with a cloth around his face, and he was starting to develop a cough that he was doing his best to hide from McCoy. He could suppress the symptoms of most illnesses for a prolonged period, but this was not the best situation in which to be harbouring a virus which might spread.

Since he was alone, he took the opportunity to clear his lungs, but he was instantly rewarded with the sound of a medical scanner warbling at his back. He turned, expecting to see McCoy, but it was Nurse Chapel, holding her scanner before her like a weapon.

'I am all right,' he said before she could accuse him of anything.

'Congestion in both lungs and in the sinuses, and a slightly elevated temperature,' she said tartly. 'Yes, Mr Spock, you're _all right_ , but you're not well.'

Spock got to his feet and put his hands behind his back.

'There are patients here far more in need of your attention, Miss Chapel,' he said.

'Well, you're wrong there, because I've just finished my rounds and handed over to Dr Thompson and Nurse O'Rourke, and Dr McCoy and Nurse Blake are attending in the other room.' She opened up the medical pouch that she was carrying and brought out a hypo. 'Just some anti-virals and vitamins,' she assured him, holding it up for him to see. 'Nothing to worry about. I'm not Leonard. I'm not going to slip you sedatives just to get you off your feet.'

'Such an act would be contrary to the medical code,' Spock said solemnly, but he held out his arm for the shot.

'There. Feel better?' she asked with a smile as she depressed the hypo.

'Not yet,' Spock said truthfully. 'But I would hardly expect to.'

She smiled again. 'Give it a few hours. But I want you to keep an eye on that cough, Mr Spock, and report any worsening to one of the medical staff. It's important.'

Spock inclined his head gravely. 'I shall do so, Miss Chapel.' He regarded her for a moment, then said, 'I assume you have checked on the captain recently?'

Her face sobered. 'Yes, we checked him just now. There's no change, Mr Spock.'

'Have you been able to ascertain if there is any brain damage?' Spock asked in a rather lower voice.

She shook her head. 'We just don't have the necessary equipment for a full brain scan. I'm sorry. It's possible that there's a small amount of brain cell loss due to lack of oxygen, but we really can't speculate about what he might or might not have lost. We certainly can't tell what's going to happen when we get him to the _Enterprise,_ if we can bring him out of it.'

Spock kept his hands behind his back, aware that he was twisting his fingers and not wanting the nurse to see that very human sign of stress.

'Then you believe he will remain in a coma until we can bring him to the facilities on the _Enterprise_?' he asked.

She smiled sadly at him, and he was struck by a sense of her tiredness. Her hair was tied back with no thought to styling, she wore no make up, and today she was not in uniform, but in native clothes.

'I apologise, Miss Chapel,' he said rather stiffly. 'You are meant to be taking a break, I assume.'

'Well, I am,' she admitted, 'but I don't mind sparing the time to talk to you about the captain. It's hard for us all.'

Spock felt a denial coming to his lips at that emotional supposition, but he said nothing. Instead he sat down in his chair and gestured for the nurse to sit in the chair set at an angle beside his. Their knees were almost touching.

'You believe that the captain will remain in a coma until we can remove him to better facilities?' he prompted her.

'Well, we can't be certain of anything,' she said gravely. 'The brain is still a mystery in many ways. But even if we do manage to transfer the captain to the hospital here the equipment is probably going to be as backward as anything you'd find if you beamed down to late twentieth century Earth. We might be able to give him a brain scan, but it wouldn't be in any kind of detail as we're used to, and there still probably wouldn't be the equipment to do anything about the damage – if there is significant damage.'

Spock sat still, digesting that, his eyes on the window a few feet away. Water droplets were rolling down the pane, catching in other drops, gaining momentum and running faster, until they hurried to the bottom of the frame, pooled, and ran out of sight. That process was unending as long at it rained. Water gathered and fell out of sight. He recalled how the captain had been longing for rain the day before it had started. The doctor had told him that every time he came in to him he, the captain, asked if the rain had begun yet. If only there were a way to reach him, to let the cool rain come into his mind...

'Mr Spock,' Miss Chapel said.

He focussed himself again. 'I apologise,' he said quickly. 'I was distracted.'

'Mr Spock, when you melded with the captain, in the truck – you said later that you think he's still there, deep within?'

Spock inclined his head. 'I did. That was my belief at the time.'

'And since then?' she prompted him.

'I have not attempted a meld,' he said.

'You've spent a lot of time near him,' she said.

There was a slight note of probing in her voice that made Spock automatically flinch away internally. These things were private. How did he make a human understand? He had not melded with Jim since that time in the truck, but he had reached out with his mind. Every day, even every few hours when he had the chance, he had reached out. He had felt blindly, like a man sinking his hand into dark flowing water, trying to catch hold of something in there. And he had caught nothing. No thoughts. No dreams. No impulses. He still believed that Jim was there, somewhere deep in his mind. But he did not know how to reach him.

He looked directly at the nurse, acknowledging again her tired face, her limp, tied back hair, her wash-worn, dull clothes. There was no intrusive interest here. She was concerned for her patient, and for her captain. She was exhausted. She was at the limit of her capacity. And even now, when she could be resting, she was choosing to use her time to talk about her profession. He knew what she was trying, indirectly, to say. He had heard them talking about it, she and McCoy, quietly and when they thought no one could hear. They wondered if Spock could bring the captain back.

'Christine,' he said, breaking through a number of personal barriers to reach out to touch her hand. She felt cold to him, and she looked up as if startled as he touched her. He left his hand resting on hers as he spoke. 'When I reached out to the captain in the truck, I was with him as he sank within himself. I followed his mind with mine. He went so deep that I almost lost myself. I tried to call him back. I – ' His voice caught, and her fingers tensed under his at the sound. He cleared his throat, and continued, 'I held him as well as I could, but eventually I lost him. The doctor called me back. Had I gone further I might not have been able to separate myself from that absence in the captain's mind. I might have been lost also. Do you understand?'

Her eyes met his. They seemed bluer than usual because of the water there, as if the colour of her irides were running over to fill her eyes.

'Yes, I think I understand, Mr Spock,' she said in a slightly choked voice.

'I would do whatever I could to help the captain,' Spock assured her.

'Yes, I know, Mr Spock,' she nodded.

He sat rather awkwardly, wondering if she were going to cry. If she did, he was not sure what he could do. But she straightened herself up and drew her hand away from his to carefully wipe along the bottom of her eyes.

'I'm really sorry,' she said. 'The last thing I want to do is embarrass you with a display like this.'

Spock lifted an eyebrow. 'You forget that embarrassment is an emotion,' he pointed out. 'I am not embarrassed.'

For a moment as she looked at him he felt as if she had looked straight through his shields into his mind, where there was a definite sense of embarrassment writhing. Then she dropped her gaze again, and smiled.

'Thank you, Mr Spock,' she said. 'Let's make a deal, shall we? If the doctors or I find out anything new about the captain's condition, you'll be the first to know. And if you do, the reverse is true.'

A slight smile touched the corners of Spock's mouth, and he nodded. 'That sounds quite acceptable, Miss Chapel,' he said.

She stood up, awkwardly sorting out her crumpled clothes with one hand. 'Don't give up on him, will you, Mr Spock?' she asked.

Spock looked at her gravely. 'I have no intention of doing that, Miss Chapel.'

'Good,' she said, sounding rather choked again. 'Good.'

And then she turned and went quickly out of the room, her boots clattering on the steps as she went downstairs. Spock steepled his fingers before his face, and sat gazing at the empty doorway that she left behind.

After a little time he got to his feet and made his way downstairs to the room where Jim lay. The captain had lost more weight. His cheeks and his eyes looked sunken, his lips thin. He was attached by his arm to a drip infuser, and the cardiostimulator was still adhered to his chest. Spock took out his tricorder and focussed it on the captain's chest. The device showed that his fractured ribs were healing well and that the bruising about the heart was improving. His heart beat steadily and slowly, with no aberrations. It seemed rather ironic that while his heart was so much stronger Jim was still lost. Perhaps without that event in the truck he would have been awake and alert now, perhaps even moving around a little. He cast his mind back to that moment again. Miss Chapel had asked him to stop the truck and he had not stopped immediately. Because of that there had been a delay in the doctor reaching him. Was it because of that, that the captain had fallen into a comatose state? But there were always other factors in decisions like that. Stopping the convey had presented a severe risk to everyone in it, not just Jim. As it was, they had escaped unharmed, but a missile had fallen on that part of the road not long after they had moved on...

McCoy would tell him it was useless to speculate on these things; although no doubt he would tell him that in rather less formal terms than Spock was accustomed to using.

He set his tricorder down. It could tell him a vast amount of technical information, but it told him almost nothing about the delicate brain within the curving skull. He brushed the captain's hair back from his forehead and laid his palm on the smooth skin. Even in sleep, a person might move a little, sigh, stretch, or murmur something. From Jim there was no response at all. In some ways he was like an animated corpse.

Spock blinked his eyes closed and excised that image from his mind. If Jim was in any way aware, that was a poor analogy to let slip through into his thoughts.

He reached deeper, feeling down into that dark water, pushing away his awareness of the small sounds and movements and scents of the room around him. The water metaphor struck him as more and more apt. This reminded him of ducking down deep beneath the surface of the ocean, opening his eyes wide to try to discern what was around him, and being able to make out nothing but the slow blurred movement of empty water. He stretched out an arm, a feeler in his mind, and touched against the non-resistance of water that slips away. No thoughts. No dreams.

Was it dangerous to go deeper? He made himself aware of his own body again, of the physicality of his knees pressing against the carpet, of the breath moving in and out of his lungs, the press of his fingertips against Jim's face. With that anchor, he lowered himself further into Jim's mind, feeling, searching, trying to catch hold of anything that seemed like a spark of awareness. He found himself in a place where there were images, thoughts, memories, but all seemed silent and still. When he accessed those thoughts he could make them move, but without his input there was nothing, and everything settled back to stillness.

He made himself aware of his own body again, of the slight chill of the room, of the feeling of his toes inside his boots and the breath moving past his lips. Then he reached deeper again, stirring that still layer of memories. It was like walking through a waxwork display. He recalled the research station on Psi 2000, people frozen where they had died, like a weird tableau crusted in ice; coming back to the ship and telling the captain about what he had seen, showing him the tricorder recordings; that terrible unravelling of emotions that had ensued from the virus from which had killed the Psi 2000 scientists.

Something blinked. Spock's fingers convulsed briefly and then settled back against Jim's face. He recalled that time again, searching out for a corresponding scene in Jim's mind. Standing in the briefing room, and Jim striking him with all of his force, and the human blows feeling like a minor irritant batting at his face, until he broke and struck back. The emotion of that time was a welling over, a maelstrom, volcano, something never to be repeated.

And suddenly he was caught in a flood. Standing in the transporter room as Jim flung out insults. _Elf with a hyperactive thyroid; you belong in a circus, right next to the dog faced boy_. The rage that rose in him and threatened to overtake him. He almost killed Jim. He almost smashed his skull to shards.

There was that blink again. A spark. A connection. Were those his memories or Jim's? _I'm sick of your half-breed interference_.

A blink. An electrical jolt. And suddenly emotion was overwhelming him, flooding him, a sense of regret and sorrow and fear so great that he could not contain it...


	13. Chapter 13

McCoy came into the room at the sound of lurching, choking sobs. Thoughts ran wildly through his mind about which of the patients it was, until he slammed open the door and saw Spock there, kneeling on the carpet beside Jim's bed, hunched over and sobbing like a child. For a moment he thought that the Vulcan had absolutely lost his mind, that the stress of weeks in a war situation had broken him; but then he saw Spock's hand spread out over Jim's face, his fingers held rigidly in the meld position, and he understood. He looked around, wondering if he should call one of the nurses or the other doctor, and as he did Christine Chapel came in with Nurse Shah in tow.

'Just you, Christine. I think he'd rather,' McCoy said quickly, gesturing Nurse Shah away. 'Close the door, Aamani. Make sure no one comes in.'

'Yes, sir,' she said quickly, hurrying backwards out through the door. She didn't look offended. Everyone was quite used to Spock's high levels of privacy.

'What is it, Doctor?' Christine asked anxiously, coming to Spock's side but hovering near him without touching, as if she were afraid to interfere.

'Goddamn Vulcan mind voodoo,' McCoy muttered half under his breath. 'He should have told me – '

'We need to bring him back,' Christine said rather desperately.

The doctor snapped back, 'I _know_ that.' After a moment he softened and said, 'Sorry, Chris. Seeing Spock in this state – '

'Is it safe to touch him?' she asked.

'I think so,' he replied.

She reached out tentatively, putting a hand on the butterfly wing of Spock's shoulder blade, that was sharp through his shirt.

'Mr Spock. Mr Spock,' she said in a low, urgent voice.

McCoy touched Spock too, shaking him a little. 'Spock. Spock, come out of it.'

The Vulcan made no sign of hearing him. He looked at Christine, feeling a moment of despair. They never covered a Vulcan going goddamn insane during a meld with his comatose friend in medical school. He knew that Christine had done vast amounts of research on Vulcan biology, though. He had done a lot himself, but he had never had quite the same motivation as she did.

'Christine, in all of you reading, have you ever come across a way to deal with this?' he asked her, 'because I sure as hell haven't.'

'Most off-planet Vulcan medical texts don't admit to many Vulcan failings,' she replied grimly.

McCoy looked up briefly to the heavens, muttering, 'Why did I ever take that medical oath?' Then he looked at Christine and said seriously, 'I'm going to try to get to him, Chris. Watch us both, okay. If it comes to the worst, try cordrazine. It might snap him out of it.'

Carefully he peeled one of Spock's hands from the captain's face, seeing the flushed marks that the Vulcan had left on the human's skin. He tried to recall the exact usual meld points that he had seen the Vulcan using, and then carefully arranged Spock's hand on his own face.

It was like receiving an electric shock. Suddenly he was plunged into a place where grief and bewilderment surrounded him. Somewhere far away he felt hands on his arm where his sleeve had fallen back, heard a woman's voice saying, 'Leonard. Leonard.'

Ah, Christine was there. He fought to stay connected to her voice while trying to sort through the maelstrom in Spock's mind. As a human, he was used to dealing with tumultuous emotion.

 _Spock_ , he called out. _Spock, Spock!_

And he felt something in return, some glimmering of awareness, like an in-taken breath.

 _Spock_ , he called again.

Suddenly he was whirling, lost in a weird chaos that felt like Spock and him blended and tangled, and glimpses of what seemed to be Jim, fighting. He felt as if he were drowning. They were all drowning. He flailed and pitched and turned, vertigo shimmering through his mind. And then the sudden shout in his mind of _I am Spock!_ and he was pitched out, and he found himself kneeling on the floor in the crowded room of patients, vomiting onto the carpet, trying to stop himself from falling. He heard Christine call, 'Aamani, in here now!' and suddenly the young nurse was kneeling next to him, helping him move a little further away from Jim, putting a pot under his head as he retched again.

He struggled to pull himself back, clawing his hands into the carpet as Nurse Shah put her hand on his back and spoke to him quietly.

'No, I'm all right. I'm all right,' he said irritably, taking the cloth that she handed him and wiping his mouth. He still felt as if the world had been knocked off its axis, but he was able to lift his head and look around towards Spock. The Vulcan's hands were off Jim now and he was slumped on the floor, shoulders shaking, gasping in air. He pushed the sick bowl away and dragged himself towards him, saying, 'Spock, Spock, are you all right?'

He put a hand on Spock's back. Chapel was on the other side of him, turning away from checking the captain's vital signs to try to assess the Vulcan. Spock was sobbing like a child.

' _Spock_ ,' McCoy said insistently, thinking, _Good god, Spock, don't have wrecked yourself with this. We need you, you goddamn green-blooded bastard!_

'D-doctor,' Spock said after a moment. He was obviously trying to control the sobs that were wracking his body. McCoy could see the effort in the shuddering of his muscles. It was not Spock's own grief; he had seen that much in his brief exposure to both minds. The emotion was all Jim's, a seething sea of unfathomable feeling.

'Spock, what happened?' McCoy insisted, suddenly angry now that the Vulcan could speak. 'Goddamnit, Spock, don't you ever go doing anything like that again. What about Jim? What could you have done to him?'

Spock drew himself up with a huge effort, blinking tears from his eyes and looking at the captain, trying to assess his condition.

'He's all right, Mr Spock,' Christine said gently, with a tearful smile.

'Spock, what did you find in there? What happened?' McCoy tried again, bursting with the urge to know.

Spock looked around, as if just now becoming aware of where he was, of the acrid scent of vomit, of the presence of Nurses Chapel and Shah.

'I – It is hard to verbalise – ' he began.

'Well, _try,_ dammit!' McCoy urged.

'I – ' He looked about again, looking from patient to patient as if bewildered and confused by the sheer amount of people in the room.

'Aamani, get Thompson in here to monitor the captain,' Chapel said in a low voice, and the woman nodded. 'Dr McCoy, Mr Spock, come on with me.'

The Vulcan got to his feet like a child, and let the nurse steer him out of the room with her hand on his arm. McCoy stayed on his knees for a moment longer, then lurched himself to his feet, trying to suppress the feeling of vertigo as he followed the woman and the Vulcan up the stairs and into the quiet room with arm chairs. Spock sank into one as if he were just holding himself back from falling, and slumped backwards against the cushions, and McCoy finally let himself see how white and shaken the Vulcan was. He began to pull out his medical pouch, thinking of giving him a stimulant, when Spock said, 'No, Doctor. No drugs.'

'Spock, you pointed-eared hobgoblin, are you reading my mind?' he growled in response.

Spock looked at him slowly, still looking somewhat bewildered. Then he said, 'I – apologise, Doctor. The raising of shields – It is hard...'

'All right, all right,' McCoy said in a slightly softer tone. 'Spock, I'm going to leave off telling you you're an irresponsible idiot for going into Jim's mind like that, just as long as you tell me what you found!'

Spock exhaled a long, shaking breath. His eyes looked swollen, his cheeks tear-stained, and it was such a strange thing to see on the Vulcan's usually impassive face.

'I – believe I reached Jim,' he said slowly, but as McCoy sat forward in joy the Vulcan lifted a hand in caution. 'Doctor, please. I did not walk into a room and have a conversation with him. I went so far into Jim's mind that I almost lost myself, and even then he was barely present. I sensed – ' He hesitated again, frowning a little, looking down at his knees before lifting his head again. 'I sensed a flicker of awareness, a moment of – of recognition.'

'Jim recognised you?' McCoy asked slowly, wanting to be very clear on this.

Spock shook his head. 'I cannot go that far, Doctor. This was not a Livingstone and Stanley moment. I know that Jim had a sensation of recognising someone familiar in his mind, someone with whom he shared memories, but I don't know that he knew who I was, or indeed how I had reached him. It was at that point that a cascade of memory started. You saw the result.'

'I saw the result,' McCoy muttered pensively.

Spock met his eyes, and the doctor was momentarily startled at the naked expression in them. He did not often see Spock looking vulnerable, but now was one of those times.

'Doctor, the captain's brief moment of awareness, if I can call it that, was not pleasant for him. He became trapped in a cycle of grief and guilt and fear. If that is what awareness does for him, it is better for him to remain dormant until we can bring him fully to consciousness. The awareness he experienced just now was facilitated only by my entering his mind. He cannot feel it on his own.'

McCoy sat for a moment with his hand on his chin, thinking of the captain downstairs lying still and unresponsive on the floor. He had always wondered what it must be like for someone in a coma. It was one of those realms that one just couldn't emulate, and he had never had satisfactory answers from those people who had woken in the end.

'So that's what it's like for them,' he murmured.

Spock shook his head.

'I cannot say that Jim's experience is the experience of all coma victims. I cannot even say that what I have seen is Jim's experience. It may be that without my intrusion into his mind he is aware of nothing. My presence there was a trigger. The circumstances were unique.'

McCoy pondered again, staring at nothing, trying to work out why this bothered him quite so much. Perhaps he envied Spock his ability to look into Jim's mind. Was that it? Was he so envious of Spock's ability to reach into Jim's unconscious mind? The captain was far beyond anyone's reach, but not Spock, of course. Not Spock, who was always right, always perfect.

That was ridiculous, though. Spock had been quite clear about the fact that, deep as he had gone, Jim was still essentially out of reach. He looked up at the Vulcan. He still looked pale, shaken, perhaps even haunted. It was ridiculous to succumb to petty jealousy over something like this. He reached out and patted the Vulcan's knee, and Spock looked up as if startled.

'All right, Spock,' he said. 'Now listen to me, and make sure this gets through your thick Vulcan skull. We're going to get Jim back to the _Enterprise_ , and we're going to get him back to us. Now, I understand how much you want to crack him out of there. I do too. But I won't risk losing both of you down here. I'm going to need you up there once we've brought him round. I don't want you trying to meld with him again, okay? Not like that. Do you understand?'

Spock looked at him and lifted an eyebrow fractionally. 'Do you mean, has your message penetrated my thick Vulcan skull?' he asked. 'Yes, I would say so, Doctor. I apologised if I overstepped the bounds erected by your medical care of Jim.'

McCoy smiled. 'Well, I never thought in my life I'd get an apology from you, Spock. But don't sweat it.'

'Don't – sweat – it?' Spock repeated quizzically.

'You know what I mean. Don't worry. It doesn't matter. Just don't do it again. I might need you to help him once we're back on the ship, so don't put yourself out of action down here, because I _really_ don't want to be in command down here, okay?'

'I understand,' Spock nodded again.

The doctor was struck by the fact that Spock seemed so tired that perhaps he could not muster the strength to argue. He looked over at Christine, who had been sitting largely in silence through this, just watching the two of them.

'Chris, fetch this Vulcan a drink and something to eat, will you, and make sure he stays up here for the next hour? You need some rest, Spock,' he said firmly, and to his amazement, the Vulcan did not demur.


	14. Chapter 14

Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye pushed his way through another tangled fall of rubble. This time the building had slumped right across the street, and twisted metal cables held blocks half suspended above them. It was too precarious to climb, so the only option was to pick their way through. He felt like a real life version of one of those childhood games where you had to move a loop along a wire without touching. Not only was he afraid that the building might come down on his head, but the tricorder indicated that some of the severed power cables were live.

He wanted to take his time getting through this rubble, but they had just encountered a troop of C.C.G. soldiers, and although the men had been friendly, he felt he would be happier with this blockade between them before he called to report to Spock. He was fairly confident of their safety now, so far into C.C.G. territory, but this war had taught him to be suspicious of everyone to a certain extent.

'Oh – god,' Ensign Gietz muttered from a little way in front of him. They had chosen separate routes, and so far Gietz seemed to be the winner at getting through the tangle.

'What is it, Zelig?' he asked apprehensively, recognising revulsion and horror in the younger man's tone.

'Oh, god,' Gietz said again, and Ndiaye made an effort to catch up and see what he was looking at.

'No, no, don't,' Gietz said, trying to push him away, but Ndiaye saw it too, the body of a child, so damaged and decomposed that he couldn't even see whether it was boy or girl. The stench made him want to vomit.

'Come on,' Ndiaye said gently, taking his arm and trying to make him move on.

'We should be able to help them,' Gietz said, his voice cracking. His eyes were almost closed, and he wasn't moving. His fists were clenched at his sides. 'We should be able to help...'

'We're doing what we can,' Ndiaye tried to soothe him. He rubbed his hand on the younger man's arm, trying to get through to him. 'Hey, Zelig, we're doing what we can. Once we get to this hospital – '

'Once we get to this hospital, _what_? _If_ we get there, _if_ it's still standing, _if_ we can get through to the ship. We've seen no one, _no one_ who can help us. Nothing. There's no one here...'

'Hey, come on Zelig,' Ndiaye said again, using his extra height and weight now to make the German walk, making him stumble down the other side of the rubble pile into the street beyond. It was a relief to be away from the stench of that fallen house. He wondered how many other bodies there were trapped under the rubble. Perhaps it had been hit at night. Perhaps the inhabitants had had no warning.

'Come on,' he said again, manoeuvring the man over to a fallen piece of masonry and sitting him down. 'I know, none of us expected this, none of us expected this horror. But we're here now. We've got to go on. Do you understand? We can't do anything but go on. The Captain, Mr Spock, everyone – they're relying on us to get through, hey? We can't help the ones who've died, but we can help the others. Hey, Zelig. Hey.'

He shook him a little, and the man finally opened his eyes and looked up and then quickly away, as if ashamed of the tears in them.

'I'm sorry,' he muttered. 'God, I'm sorry, Derek. The last thing you need – '

'All I need is to keep moving,' Ndiaye told him quietly, patting him on the arm again, and then pulling him into an awkward hug. 'That's all we need to do. We need to find this hospital.'

As Gietz got up Ndiaye smiled.

'That's the boy. Come on. You know, none of us are used to this. Even the guys who've been in security section for years. We're used to clean fighting, mostly. Phasers and plasma bombs, maybe. Not this – this twentieth century horror.'

Gietz stared into the street ahead.

'Death is death,' he muttered.

'Some death is cleaner,' Ndiaye pointed out.

'Is it better?' Gietz asked, looking at him.

Ndiaye looked back at him for a moment, looking into his wide brown eyes, his mussed brown hair, his face smeared with dirt and water. He looked like a child in a man's clothes. Really there wasn't much age difference between them – after all, what was seven years? – but still, Gietz looked a world younger. He'd have to be sure to see he got counselling after all this. Hell, he'd probably need it himself. They all would. Aside from personal concerns, PTSD erupting in a starship's crew was a danger to everyone.

'No, I suppose a clean death is not better,' he said. 'Not for the dead. But maybe it's better for the living.'

For a little while it had stopped raining. It was a relief to have the sky free of moisture, although high overhead the clouds still roiled in their slow majesty. It didn't seem like anything cleared the clouds from this place. Only once or twice at night, when the temperature change had lifted up the winds, had he seen through to space above.

Ndiaye opened up his communicator and put another call through to Spock. The Vulcan took a moment to answer, and sounded shaken, so much so that Ndiaye was compelled to ask, 'Is everything all right, sir?'

'Yes, Commander, quite fine,' Spock said quickly. 'Please report.'

'We're close now, sir,' Ndiaye said. 'About half a mile, according to readings. The place is still quiet. We've encountered no enemy soldiers, but we've seen a few on our side.'

'Please clarify, Commander,' Spock filtered voice said crisply.

Ndiaye sighed silently. He knew that ostensibly they were to take no sides, but in practice they had only been under fire from the W.C.G., and had mainly helped people from the same ethnic group as the C.C.G.. Spock himself, in his actions, obviously favoured the C.C.G. over their enemies.

'We've seen no W.C.G., sir,' he clarified. 'But we came across a patrol of ten C.C.G. soldiers about ten minutes ago. They viewed us with some suspicion, but once we explained our presence they allowed us through. They told us the hospital is still operating, and not far away.'

'Good, Commander,' Spock replied quickly. 'I shall not hold you up. Carry on.'

Ndiaye glanced at Gietz with a grin, and finished off the communication.

'You feel ready to go on?' he asked.

Gietz rubbed his hands over his dirty face, and nodded. 'Yeah, I think so,' he said tiredly. 'I'm sorry about all that, Derek. This is hard, you know.'

'I know,' Ndiaye said, patting him on the arm. 'Come on, let's see how quickly we can do this final half mile, hey? Just think. They might have food at the other end. Hot drinks...'

'Communication equipment,' Gietz said as if he were speaking of unknown luxury. 'Derek, why didn't we bring a long range communicator with us in the first place?'

Ndiaye laughed. 'No one expected the _Enterprise_ to fall out of contact, you know. Hand communicators should have been enough.'

'They're not going to have subspace transmitters, are they?' Gietz asked. 'They don't have the technology yet.'

Ndiaye shrugged. 'We don't know that. They're not very advanced, but they've been communicating off world for a while, since their first contact. So they'll either have a subspace transmitter, or they might have the equipment to help us build one.'

' _Us_?' Gietz asked doubtfully.

Ndiaye dodged past a small pile of rubbish and continued up the street. 'Well, maybe me,' he grinned. 'I aced my communications and electronics classes in Academy, you know. I was torn between security and communications, fell down on the side of security eventually. But I know how to put together a subspace transmitter. Maybe not as well as Spock, but I can do the job in a pinch.'

'I only ever wanted to be in security,' Gietz said musingly. 'I know they say it's a one way ticket to a fast death, but I'm not going to be one of those ones. I don't care so much about communications or engineering or command or science. I just wanted to be out there on the edge. In the first wave, seeing new places.'

'Listen, little boy,' Ndiaye said, slowing his pace and suddenly becoming serious. 'You're one of my best men, you know, but if you want to be one of the long-lived ones you should start taking an interest in communications, command, engineering, science. The more you know and the harder you think, the longer you live. Right? You're clever and you're practical, and you can do anything you put your mind to. Remember how you fixed the electric in that house? I want you to live longer.'

Gietz sighed, continuing to trudge up the street as the rain began to fall again.

'After this,' he murmured. 'You know, after this I'm rethinking all of it. Do I want any of it? If this is the first wave, do I want to be here?'

Ndiaye reached out his arm and squeezed the younger man's shoulders. 'I've been in this game for six years, Zelig. It's hard sometimes. It's scary. It's freaking exciting. But this is the first time I've ever been in a situation like this. The first time I've seen the full horror of this kind of war. Mostly it's landing party duty on new planets, we're standing guard against crazy creatures and weird coloured guys and sometimes even flowers. I've never been in this kind of thing before. Maybe never will again. That's what this job's like.'

'Ach, I know,' Gietz sighed, shrugging his pack higher onto his back and picking up his pace. He flipped open his tricorder and looked at the screen. 'Derek, I think we're close,' he said. He looked up and ahead at the edifice of a high, square building rising above the smaller houses around. 'Maybe that's it. Do you think that's it?'

Ndiaye followed his gaze, and almost whooped. He could see, just edging over the top of one of the intervening buildings, the curved green symbol of Initial Medical Services, this country's equivalent of Earth's red cross or crescent.

'Come on!' he said, suddenly losing all of his tiredness. He wanted to jog, to run, even, but he stayed his pace at a quick walk, trying to stay mindful of the danger that could be hiding in any of the buildings around. 'That's it, Zelig!'

He wanted to kiss his friend in jubilation, but instead he carried on up the street, feet pounding against the hard ground, getting closer and closer. He could see that there were lights on in the building, and became aware with the contrast that they made that it was starting to grow darker outside, with the thick cloud and evening approaching. The place had power, it was running, it was a living building, vital with people.

'Come on!' he said again. There were only a few hundred yards to cross, and then they were there, outside a building that was obviously full of life.

'Take care, old man,' Gietz warned him, gesturing towards the troops who were stationed outside the entrance.

Ndiaye took in a breath and slowed his pace. They walked up to the troops with their hands held away from their bodies, ready for a challenge. Some of the soldiers were actively on guard, but there was a group of them lounging, leaning against a wall, and Ndiaye chose to approach these, as less confrontational.

'Peace,' he called out as they approached, holding his hands clear. 'Peace. We're in need of aid.'

He could see the suspicion on their faces, the same kind of suspicion as he had seen with the soldiers they had encountered previously. Despite their native clothing they were humans and couldn't look quite like natives. They did not stick out quite as much as Spock would in the same situation, but still, they were just not quite right.

'We come from a party of external aid,' he said as they came closer. 'From the United Federation of Planets.'

At that the men turned to each other and began to speak in low voices. Finally the one wearing the highest ranking crest turned back to them. He was dressed in a tired, muddy uniform, his dark hair almost hidden beneath his cap, but his brown eyes looked used to smiling, despite his current suspicion.

'Show identification,' he said curtly.

Ndiaye reached very carefully into a pocket to draw out the identity cards that they were all required to carry. He held it up to the man, coming forward slowly. He took it from Ndiaye's hand and studied it, then scanned the code with a small scanner. After a moment he smiled broadly.

'Ah, Federation of Planets,' he said, opening his arms as if in welcome. 'Men, these are some of our helpers from other planets.'

Suddenly there was joviality all around, and Ndiaye relaxed, glancing at Gietz and laughing in relief as they were brought into the group.

'But where is your need?' the leader asked suddenly, looking the two up and down. 'Where are you injured?'

Ndiaye shook his head quickly. 'No, we've come on behalf of others,' he explained. 'I'm Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye, this is Ensign Gietz. Our doctors and nurses and patients are five miles back, their trucks stopped by the destruction. We've lost contact with our ship in orbit. We need to get our people to this hospital, to this place of safety, and we need to contact someone off-planet. Do you have the necessary communications equipment here?'

'I'm Captain Liana,' the man told him. He gestured towards the wide main doors and indicated that they should follow. 'You'll find facilities stretched, Commander, and supplies low, but plenty of willing hands to help. I can't tell you about off-planet transmitters but our communications staff will be glad to do what they can.'

Ndiaye met Gietz's eyes, seeing how the younger man had become softened with sudden relief. He looked exhausted after the long trek to this hospital, and Ndiaye felt the same.

'I must call back to my commanding officer,' he said as they made their way inside, into a space filled with light and human sounding noise. 'We weren't sure this hospital was still functional.'

They turned a corner into a wide area, and he almost recoiled at the sight. There were dozens of narrow utilitarian beds in the space, a place that looked like it had formerly been a waiting area, with screens being pulled between them the beds, some purpose-designed and some makeshift. What had been a soft noise of people from further away was now obviously the babble of medical personnel, patients, and worried onlookers, all trying to make some sense out of the chaos.

'So many people...' Gietz murmured.

Captain Liana looked at him sharply. 'This is a war zone. What do you expect? What have you seen as you walked through the streets? This used to be a beautiful city. This used to be a centre of culture and art. And now – ' He waved his arm vaguely at the rows of patients and busy staff. 'Now this.'

'If we can get our people here, they can help,' Ndiaye offered quickly. 'We have some patients, but our medical staff will be able to help. This is why we came. We arrived closer to the front line, hoping to help there, but we lost contact with our ship...'

'They will take any help you have,' Liana said grimly. 'But now, let's get you past all of this. This isn't where you need to be. We have communications offices where we can contact people planet-wide. Come, and we'll see what you can do to find your ship.'

Despite the chaos and the suffering around them, despite the obvious need and the paucity of resources, Ndiaye allowed himself to feel relief and joy. Finally they had reached help. It might only be a matter of hours now before they could arrange for their people to be brought here, or before they could contact, if not the _Enterprise,_ then at least some other Federation vessel.

'Where are your people?' Liana asked as they exited the wide area of patients and moved into another corridor. 'They are some way to the west, yes?'

'Yes, to the west,' Ndiaye said quickly.

'In Arthan Section,' Gietz added. 'We found a house there when our trucks were stopped by the rubble in the street.'

Liana jerked around to face him. 'Arthan Section?' he asked urgently.

'Yes,' Ndiaye said apprehensively. 'Arthan Section, the west side. Five miles west from here.'

'Then we need to move fast,' Liana said, 'because all our intelligence tells us that soon Arthan Section will be under control of the W.C.G. – and so will your people be, if they get through alive.'


	15. Chapter 15

Spock was sitting in the room upstairs, attempting to meditate, when his communicator sounded again. He stopped the sigh before he exhaled, lowering his steepled fingers and picking up his communicator from the table. He was somewhat surprised to notice that Miss Chapel was still there, sitting in a chair opposite him, but at some point during his meditation she had evidently slipped into sleep. She did not look an exactly decorous sight, with her head slumped sideways and her mouth a little open, but she looked so tired that Spock wondered if any rearrangement of the shifts could be made to give her some extra time off. It was probably impossible, of course. Everyone was working to their limits. Everyone was on short rations. Everyone was exhausted. If it had not been for McCoy's insistence, Spock would have been back downstairs now, perhaps outside looking for food, perhaps continuing to try to shift the blocks in the road.

He picked up the insistently beeping communicator and flipped the grille open, internally checking the time as he did. It had not been long since Ndiaye last called, but it was likely to be him. If his estimation were correct, the men had probably just reached the hospital.

'Commander Spock,' Ndiaye's voice snapped urgently through the communicator.

'Spock here,' Spock said, straightening his posture at the sound of the man's voice. 'Report, Commander.'

'Urgent intel, sir,' Ndiaye responded. 'There are likely to be W.C.G. troops moving towards your position. A massive onslaught.'

Spock's eyebrow shot up, but he kept his voice calm and quiet so as not to wake the sleeping nurse.

'State your sources, Commander,' he said.

'We reached the hospital, sir. C.C.G. troops have a base here. Their intelligence reports massing of W.C.G. troops one mile west of your position. They're likely to come straight through.'

'We will evacuate,' Spock said without further preamble. 'Have you managed contact with off-planet entities yet?'

'Not yet, sir. I called you as soon as Captain Liana warned me of the attack.'

'Very well. Be sure to attempt contact soon. Spock out.'

He snapped the communicator shut and immediately reached out a hand to touch the nurse's shoulder.

'Miss Chapel,' he said, shaking her gently.

She awoke instantly, looking around her and then fixing on Spock's face. A blush rose to her cheeks.

'Oh, I'm sorry, Mr Spock, I didn't – ' she began rather confusedly.

'Miss Chapel we have intelligence of an imminent push forward by W.C.G. troops,' Spock said, not waiting for her to finish her sentence.

She jerked up out of her chair instantly.

'We're evacuating then,' she said, and Spock nodded.

'Immediately,' he said. 'You will go and inform Doctors McCoy and Thompson and I will pass word to the others via communicator.'

'Yes, sir,' she said. She snatched up a couple of items from the table and hurried out of the room without looking back. Spock followed her, snapping open his communicator again and contacting the Lieutenant Johnson and Ensign Gomez, who were currently rostered to be outside working on the road blockage.

'Johnson, we're evacuating,' he snapped without waiting for conversational preliminaries. 'Phaser the rest of that blockage now. Ready the trucks.'

He stepped into the severe injuries room to see Dr McCoy already starting to dismantle equipment, Dr Thompson checking patients preliminary to moving them, and nurses bustling about packing up supplies. He turned about and went into one of the other ground floor rooms and began to pack up the non-medical equipment. It was pleasing to see how efficiently everyone was working, but the knowledge of the impending influx of W.C.G. forces overshadowed that satisfaction.

He gathered up an armful of equipment and hurried outside. Thankfully it was not raining again, but the clouds were thick, and the sound of shelling and gunfire was ominously close. He pushed the equipment into the back of one of the trucks and lifted his tricorder, scanning for signs of the nearing troops.

As he did, he heard the sound of pounding feet, and snapped his head up to see people running up the street, some carrying bundles or bags, some just running with what they had. All looked panicked. Some were pulling small children along or carrying them on shoulders or hip. He looked long enough to register them as no threat, before looking back to the tricorder. The instrument showed vehicles moving not far behind the fleeing people.

He turned back to their temporary base, jogging to the door and shouting, 'Out! Now! No time!'

Two of the nurses were already carrying a patient out on a stretcher. Then McCoy came out with one end of a stretcher and he glimpsed Jim's gold-brown hair and pallid face before turning into the other room, where the less severely injured patients were.

'Everyone who can walk, out now!' he snapped. He looked about to see how many of the patients were starting to stand, then darted forward to lift a man who was trying but failing.

'Out, out, out!' he snapped again, manoeuvring past the slowly moving patients to carry his load to one of the trucks.

'What's happening, what's happening?' the man in his arms moaned. He was a native, and recovering from leg injuries. Blood had seeped through the cloth bandages on his left leg.

'The W.C.G. are advancing,' Spock said in clipped tones, looking about the road to the trucks, where McCoy and Thompson were loading Kirk on board. 'McCoy, where shall I put this man?' he asked, shouting now.

'In the back truck,' McCoy snapped back. 'Severe in the two front ones, the rest in the others.'

'All right,' Spock replied. The sounds of fighting were getting closer now. He was starting to have doubts as to whether they would make it out of the area in time. Men on foot would always be faster than trucks on these damaged and partially blocked roads. 'Come on,' he shouted again, trying to urge the patients to greater speed.

Now the fleeing residents were coming up the street and passing the lorries, staring in bewilderment, probably trying to work out which side these people with trucks were on.

'Initial Medical Services,' Spock snapped out to some of them passing, pointing at the green symbol that had been scrawled or pasted on the trucks in places.

Some of the passing people understood and took time to help the patients move down the steps and across the road. Others just pushed on by.

'Into the trucks!' Spock shouted. 'McCoy, do we have them all?'

Lieutenant Johnson came running out of the door calling, 'That's everyone, sir. All out.'

'Phasers ready,' Spock ordered. 'Everyone who is able must be armed. Johnson, Shah, Gomez, Davies and I will drive.'

'Spock, I want you on this front truck with the critical cases,' McCoy called out, coming running over to him. 'I'll go in the back. Johnson can drive the other critical one, Dr Thompson in the back. Chapel, you go in there with Shah driving,' he gestured at the third truck. 'O'Rourke and Blake in the back of Gomez and Davies' trucks.'

'We need to move out now,' Thompson cut in, looking up from his tricorder. 'I read masses approaching.'

Spock swung up into the seat of the front truck and started the engine. The men had done a good job at breaking down the last of the road blockage, and the street looked clear for the next few hundred yards. Then fingers grasped at the wound down window on the passenger side, and he looked out to see a woman crying, 'Please, my children. Take my children!'

His indecision was momentary. They couldn't help everyone. But he nodded quickly and said, 'Get in.'

She wrenched the door open and handed up two small, scared children before climbing up herself. Spock put his head out of the window and shouted, 'Help whom you can!' before turning back to the road and pulling away. The children in the seat beside him were whimpering and crying, but their small sounds were subsumed by the rumbling of the engine and the growing sounds of warfare not far behind. As they lurched forwards through the twisting streets they passed troops moving the other way, and Spock felt a small measure of relief. At least there was some resistance. But then they were at a road block again, and he had to jump out of the cab to phaser away the rubble. Too many stops like this and they would find themselves out of phaser power and at the mercy of the enemy. No matter how hard he tried not to take sides in this conflict, it was obvious that in this situation the W.C.G. were the enemy.

He got back into the cab, trying to shut out the panicked emotions of the woman and children next to him, and started driving again. The trucks were full of fuel, at least. They had managed to siphon off enough petroleum from various abandoned vehicles to make sure of that. They should make another hundred miles, and they were unlikely to need to or be able to travel that far. But after a few hundred yards there was another blockage, a building destroyed by bombs and slumped completely across the street, and even as he got out to phaser through he was aware that it would be too late. Another missile slammed into the street just fifty yards in front of them, leaving a crater that would be impassable without filling.

'We'll need to turn around,' he yelled back to the truck behind, and Johnson, at the wheel, nodded sharply and put his head out to pass the message back. A moment later, he had no head. Spock stared for a moment in honest shock as the rest of Johnson's body slumped back like a sack into the vehicle. The side of the truck was splattered in red blood and pieces of the man's skull. There were troops coming up the road behind them. Spock snatched up a piece of clothing from the floor, a tattered jacket with the Initial Medical Services symbol on it. It should be recognisable by both sides. Theoretically, they should not be fired upon. But the symbols were already on the trucks, and Johnson was dead...

'Everyone take cover!' he shouted as he swung himself out of the truck. 'Keep your head down,' he shouted back at the woman and her children that he left in the cab. He stepped out into the road, holding up the jacket in one hand, keeping his other hand raised in the air.

'Initial Medical Services,' he shouted out, moving cautiously into the open, where the troops could see them. 'Initial Medical Services! Hold your fire!'

There was a moment of hesitation in the faces of the men who were advancing towards them. Spock held the jacket higher, making sure the symbol was visible.

'Initial Medical Services,' he shouted again. 'We have medical personnel and patients on board. Hold your fire!'

As he stood there his communicator suddenly chirruped at his hip, breaking the momentary silence. Spock stood motionless, letting the thing sound. It cut off and then someone else's communicator began to make a noise, but obviously no one in the tense situation felt able to open their device and reply.

Spock turned his head almost imperceptibly towards the noise as a third communicator sounded. A shot cracked out, and instantly Spock felt hot pain explode in his left arm. He dropped the jacket from suddenly limp fingers as his arm dropped to his side. His skull was dizzy with pain. He pressed his right hand onto the shattered left arm.

'Initial Medical Services,' he shouted again, but his voice was considerably weaker. He could feel hot blood streaming down his arm and dripping off his fingers. He looked around to see McCoy looking out of the back of the truck behind him, obviously itching to come to his aid, and he said in a low voice, 'McCoy, stay there!'

There was hesitation amongst the advancing troops again, and then one of them shouted an order. Another laughed and let loose with an automatic weapon, raking one of the rear trucks with bullets, before the leader snapped an order again.

The troops moved on, past them, up the street. Spock suddenly fell to his knees, his head dropping, pressing hard with his right hand against his shattered arm as blood pumped through his fingers.

'All right, Spock, I'm coming!' McCoy called. 'And don't even think of telling me you're all right!' His face was white and shaken as he jumped down from the back of the truck.

'The other trucks,' Spock forced out through gritted teeth. 'You must check the other trucks...'

McCoy looked between Spock and the trucks at the rear of the convoy, where bullet holes had shredded the canvas sides. The holes were too high up to have hit patients who were lying down, but anyone on their feet would have been hit.

'Lie down, Spock,' he said, helping the Vulcan to lie back on the dirty street. 'Lie down. No, I can't leave you. I need help over here!' he shouted. 'Goddammit, Spock. Spock, I need you to help me. Use your Vulcan magic. Try to slow your heart rate or you're going to bleed out.'

Spock registered the seriousness in the doctor's voice.

'This is going to hurt like hell,' the doctor warned him, lifting Spock's arm up above his head as it had been when he was shot. 'Spock, ready? This is going to hurt like hell,' he repeated.

'I – thought – ' Spock began through gritted teeth. He felt nauseous. His vision was fading at the edges. Then the doctor's foot descended on his arm and he cried out aloud.

'I'm sorry, Spock. It's gone through the brachial artery. _I need help here_ ,' the doctor shouted again, and Spock heard running footsteps.

Spock lay staring up at the white clouds that covered the sky, forcing himself to remain conscious and alert. All thoughts of getting up and checking in the trucks had been driven out of his mind. It was all he could do to concentrate on slowing his heart rate and remaining alert.

Someone else knelt down beside him and he recognised Nurse O'Rourke. He forced himself, thickly, to speak.

'Report, Nurse,' he said before she could say anything, as she opened up a medical kit.

'Now, hold on, Spock,' McCoy said furiously. 'You're not in charge right now. Nurse, I need a surgical tourniquet, quickly. We barely have options for transfusion in this situation. Spock – '

Spock looked up at the doctor, seeing real fear in the man's eyes. He tried to breathe slowly, to slow his heart rate further, aware that every beat was forcing blood through the severed artery.

'Is Dr Thompson – ' he began.

'Dr Thompson's alive. He's seeing to people,' O'Rourke told him. 'Mr Spock. Mr Spock, focus on my face,' she said as his eyes drifted sideways. 'Doctor, do you need the reserve blood pack?'

'Not yet. Not here,' McCoy muttered.

Spock could feel that she was doing something with his arm, something unbearably tight replacing the pressure of McCoy's foot on his shattered limb.

'Okay,' the doctor said, finally taking his weight off Spock's arm and kneeling down beside him. 'Okay, Spock. Stay with us.'

'I – ' _I am unlikely to go anywhere_ , Spock wanted to say, but his voice failed. He tried to keep his eyes on the doctor's face. 'What – injuries – in trucks?' he asked. He seemed to be losing control of his lips and tongue.

'I – don't know, sir,' O'Rourke said rather shakily. 'Some injuries in my truck. One dead in Davies' truck, a native – I saw them pulling him out. But I don't know...'

'Never mind,' Spock murmured. The circle of sky above him seemed to be getting smaller, and there was whistling in his ears. He could smell the copper scent of blood all around him. His side was soaked in it. Suddenly he felt very cold.

McCoy pressed a hypo to his other arm, and he felt a little stronger. A medical scanner warbled again.

'How bad is the arm?' Spock asked, trying to hold on to consciousness.

'Don't worry, Mr Spock,' O'Rourke said reassuringly. She laid a blanket over his torso as he began to shiver.

Spock could read in her tone that the news was not good. He started to try to speak again but found himself stammering.

'Mr Spock,' McCoy's voice cracked through the haze, 'you have had an antiquated Caboli lead bullet pass through your arm. It's shattered both of the upper bones and severed the brachial artery. Now, you're going to be quiet and let me work. O'Rourke, I need to get him moved into one of the trucks, or somewhere that can at least pass for sterile. Spock, you're going to be all right, but I'm going to put you under now.'

A hypo hissed against his side. Spock stared up at the circle of sky above him again seeing the light diminish as everything narrowed into a darkness where at first there was only pain, and then, nothing.


	16. Chapter 16

Christine Chapel lay pressed against the bed of the truck she was in, her arm flung across the head of one of her patients, as if that would stop bullets. She had dropped to the floor the instant the bullets had started cracking through the air, her heart beating so hard that she could hear it in her ears. She heard Spock shouting to them to take cover, and then heard him calling out that they were Initial Medical Services, trying desperately, as desperate as a Vulcan could sound, to spare the convoy an attack. She could hear his footsteps on the gritty ground, not far from her truck. When a gun fired again she held her breath, her heart leaping into her throat, so scared that she could not move. She kept her eyes closed, feeling as if the dark might protect her, like a child under the bedclothes.

She could hear the difference in Spock's voice. She was sure he had been hit. He was alive, thank god, but she was sure he had been hit. She heard male laughter, low and cruel sounding, and anger rose in her so hotly that she almost could have got up, but she forced herself to stay still. Then bullets sprayed through the air again, and her heart hammered. She kept her head forced down, the words _Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god_ running through her mind like prayer beads, until finally she heard their booted feet marching away, and a flurry of activity that indicated that the troops had gone.

She stayed still for just a moment longer, but she could smell blood in the air. She knew that not everyone had managed to get down as low as she. There were more people in the truck than they should have been carrying, refugees who had clambered in as they drove lumberingly through the streets. She could hear McCoy outside tending to Spock. She wanted with every ounce of her being to go to his side, but it was obvious as she looked cautiously round the truck side that he was being looked after, so she turned back to the people in her vehicle.

'Was anyone hit?' she asked crisply, looking around and holding out her medical scanner.

A hand was put up, ghostly white in the dim light of the truck interior. 'I – I was hit. I was hit.'

It was one of the refugees, a man of middle age, it seemed. Christine looked around again at the others, rationalising that the quiet ones could be the worst injured.

'Where were you hit?' she asked at the same time of the man who had raised his hand.

'I – I don't know...'

He seemed bewildered. She swept her scanner over the occupants again, making a base check for strength of life signs, but everyone was in acceptable limits. She pushed her way through to the man at the back, asking, 'Where does it hurt?'

Then she noticed the woman lying across his lap. His clothes were soaked in blood. The woman showed no life signs at all.

She felt tears stinging at the edges of her eyes. This was too much. Just too much. This woman had died without a word. The bullet had gone through her skull.

'Do you know her?' she asked, trying to manoeuvre the dead weight of the body off the man's lap.

'Know her?'

He looked down in confusion, starting to help Christine move the body away, suddenly looking revolted.

'I don't know her,' he stammered. 'I mean – she – she lives near me, I think. I don't know her. Can you help her? Can we help her?'

'She's dead,' Christine said without preamble. 'Where are you hurt?'

He looked down at the blood that was soaking his clothing, and looked about to faint. Christine extended her scanner again.

'That's her blood, not yours. Where are you hurt?' she asked again.

'I – I – '

Christine scanned him one more time. He showed a small amount of malnutrition, but she could not discern so much as a graze. She tried to hold in her impatience and disgust. She knew that situations like this were horrendous and confusing. He had probably just seen the blood and assumed it was his.

'You're not injured,' she told him very clearly. 'My instruments show no wounds. Now, can you help me get this woman out of here with some dignity? I don't want to drag her.'

He still looked stunned, but he clambered to his feet, muttering apologies, and helped the nurse to carry the dead woman out of the truck. The other people inside looked shell shocked. Some were crying. Children huddled their faces into adults' bodies. In an ideal situation she would have stayed in the trucks and comforted these shocked and terrified beings, but she needed to get out and check on the other patients.

She stepped out into the street, feeling as if she were just waiting for a bullet to rip through her flesh and bones, but there were no soldiers, just their people and the refugees they had brought along, slowly clambering out of the trucks and looking about as if they had no idea what to do next. She saw Spock lying on the ground, his face ashen, with McCoy and Nurse O'Rourke huddled about him tending to his arm and preparing to lift him. She saw green blood spread out in a pool at his side and under him as they lifted him up, and her stomach lurched. They had only two pints of reserve Vulcan blood supplies. Once that was used, at best they could make up artificial plasma in the med-generator, but it was never as good, and had such a high chance of being rejected.

She was torn, looking about, trying to separate her concern for Spock from her personal feelings. But she knew where the reserve blood supplies were and it was quite probable that McCoy didn't. She ran back to her truck and made her way through the patients to where the storage crate was near the divide between back and cab. There were largely only the injured left inside now. Most of the able-bodied had got out into the air.

She wrenched the top of the box open and found the stasis locker with its emergency pints of Vulcan blood in it. She took the whole locker, since to take the blood out would cause it to start to degrade, and she didn't know absolutely if the doctor needed it. McCoy had cleared out the back of the rear-most truck in the convoy, where the least injured patients had been, and she could hear him inside, snapping out orders about lights and steri-fields.

'Doctor,' she called, looking in through the back. 'I've got the reserve pints of Spock's blood.'

'Good, we'll need it,' he said grimly without looking around.

Spock was laid out flat on the bed of the truck and McCoy was busy cutting away the clothing from the upper half of his body.

'Do you need help, Doctor?' she asked crisply.

McCoy hesitated for the smallest space of time. 'Not yet, Chris,' he replied. 'I need you and Thompson to make sure no one else is severely injured. If they are, set up a place in the back of one of the other trucks. Make sure all our medical staff are okay, and get them working.'

'Yes, sir,' she said quickly.

She gave one last look at Spock, then turned away from the back of the truck. She mentally counted up who she had seen. Dr McCoy, Nurse O'Rourke. She looked about and saw Nurse Shah bending over someone and wiping blood from their shoulder.

'Aamani, is Dr Thompson – ' she began.

'In there, looking after casualties,' Nurse Shah replied, looking up briefly from her patient to nod towards one of the trucks.

Dr McCoy, Dr Thompson, Nurse O'Rourke, Nurse Shah. She needed to be sure of nurses Davis and Blake, Lieutenant Johnson, Ensign Gomez. Ensigns Mabbott and Gaston were both still patients. She ran to one of the other trucks and looked into the cab. For a moment she didn't recognise the person slumped at the wheel, and then gradually she realised the clothing, the hands, the body shape, were those of Lieutenant Johnson. He had no head, and the cab floor was pooled with blood.

She turned away, clamping down on her feelings. It didn't help to be shocked. It didn't help to feel. Spock was right.

Then she saw Ensign Gomez emerging from one of the trucks. She went from truck to truck and found Davies and Blake both tending to patients. She saw two bodies on the ground, put close together, but she didn't recognise them. They must have been more of the refugees, who were far more likely to have been caught in the bullet storm because they weren't lying flat in the trucks like the patients. Then she looked into the final truck to see Dr Thompson kneeling over someone, working at bandaging up a wound in their side.

'Doctor, do you need help?' she asked.

He nodded towards a huddled figure at the side of the truck.

'See to that woman, can you? Gunshot to the right shoulder. I've packed it to stop the bleeding but that's all. I needed to see to this abdominal wound first.'

Christine went immediately to the woman and carefully peeled away the packing, which was soaked with blood but had at least staunched the flow. She began mechanically to assess the damage and do what she could to clean and treat it, wondering inwardly at how she had ended up in this situation, crouching in a truck treating primitive bullet wounds. The bullet had gone straight through, at least, and avoided bone, but the woman was white with pain, and she quickly gave her a strong painkiller.

'Have we lost anyone?' Thompson asked, not looking up from his work.

'Lieutenant Johnson,' she replied. Saying it aloud made it seem more real, and her stomach lurched again. God, that could have been Spock. It could have been McCoy, or one of the nurses. Bad enough that it was Johnson, a man she didn't work with every day on the ship, but with whom she had cultivated a friendship in their time on Paladas. 'Leonard's working on Spock. He was injured pretty severely, shot through the arm. He's lost a lot of blood.'

'We need to get to that hospital,' Thompson commented.

Christine almost laughed. It was such an obvious statement. She suddenly felt hysterical, and she worked hard at calming herself, focussing intently on her work on the woman's shoulder.

'How are we going to get there if we're in W.C.G. territory now?' she asked, carefully controlling her voice.

'I don't know,' Thompson said bleakly. 'How are you doing with that shoulder?'

Christine gently helped the woman she had been treating to lie down. 'It was all soft tissue damage. Debrided and bandaged. She'll need more attention, but she's done for now.'

'We need water,' Thompson commented, holding up his hands, which were covered in blood. He suddenly seemed to snap, and threw an empty hypo canister across the truck. 'For the gods' sake, we need equipment, we need sterile spaces, we need resources to treat these people!'

Christine settled her patient and touched her hand to Thompson's shoulder.

'We're doing what we can,' she said steadily, trying to draw again on an imitation of Vulcan control to keep her own flailing emotions from surfacing. She itched to get out of the truck and check on Spock's progress, but she couldn't. There were too many other people to check on.

'I'll call Blake in to watch these two and we can make rounds,' she said steadily, thinking that if they could establish some kind of routine, no matter how loose, it might help. 'And perhaps there's a building we can shelter in here, if we need to. Perhaps we can keep on driving.'

' _Towards_ the front line?' Thompson asked incredulously. 'Don't forget, we're behind the fighting now.'

Christine sighed. It was true. Maybe they would be safer going back than forwards. But most of all she feared more troops coming through, and she was sure it would happen soon.

'Listen, Christine, go and make sure McCoy doesn't need more backup,' Thompson said, straightening himself up and drawing in a deep breath as if to steady himself. 'I'll make rounds myself. Spock's got pretty complex needs, and you know more about Vulcan biology than the other nurses.'

She did not stop to argue now she had sanction from the doctor. She pulled out a sanitiser spray to clean her hands, and quickly went to find Spock, sending Blake in to Thompson on the way. She twitched aside the fabric that hung down at the back of the truck to see McCoy and O'Rourke intent on their work, illuminated by a large light panel hastily hung up from the struts of the truck roof.

'Doctor, Dr Thompson sent me in to help,' she said quietly. Spock was covered in a green sheet with just his face and arm uncovered. O'Rourke was holding an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose with one hand and adjusting the flow on the infuser with the other. Dark green blood was steadily seeping from its clear packet into Spock's covered right arm.

'Good,' McCoy muttered, not looking up. 'Get up here, will you? Try not to shake the truck. You can help me with these blood vessels before I tackle the bone.'

Christine clambered carefully into the back and knelt down at McCoy's side. This was such a long way from the operating room on the _Enterprise_ , but in some ways it felt like such a familiar scene, attending at Spock's side after yet another injury on duty. She moved the instrument tray a little to fit in, and asked, 'What can I do, Doctor?'


	17. Chapter 17

Spock rose to consciousness slowly and uncomfortably. First came the awareness of pain, pain radiating from his arm and through his shoulder into his neck and side. He could feel every beat of his heart pushing blood through that agonised limb. The sound of it swushed in his ears. It was all that he could hear at first. The pain in his arm was overwhelming, but paler than that his head ached and his stomach griped, and his tongue felt thick in his mouth. He tried to bring his controls to bear, to tell himself that pain was a thing of the mind, but his mind seemed reluctant to listen.

He lay without moving in the dark cocoon of pain, just listening to his pulse in his ears, feeling breath slipping in and out through his lips. There was a strong scent of gasoline, of damp and dirt. He was slightly chilled. All this meant that he had survived. What had he survived?

Then he remembered. Standing beside the trucks, facing W.C.G. troops. The crack of a gun and the sudden splintering of his arm, and a pain that enveloped his body. He recalled McCoy standing on the broken limb with all his weight to stop the artery venting all the blood from his body. He recalled struggling to stay conscious. Of course, in the end McCoy had sedated him. That explained the headache and cramping nausea.

He needed to wake up. The urgency flooded him suddenly, sending adrenaline through his veins, and he fought against the drugs in his system, trying to wake. He turned his head a little and pain blossomed out from his arm again in a sore, sharp wave.

'No, don't try to move, Mr Spock,' came the voice of Christine Chapel from very close by him. 'Don't try to move.'

He tried to blink, and found his eyes crusted closed. Something cool and damp swiped gently across his eyelids, and then he could see. He opened his eyes to a semi-dark space, a roof that seemed low. Nurse Chapel was sitting beside him, her head bending down over him, her blonde hair haloed by the dim light from behind. He opened his mouth to try to speak, and choked on dryness.

'Here, take a sip, just a little,' the nurse said, putting a hand behind his head and touching a cup to his lips. He felt water trickle into his mouth and let it soak into his tissues before slipping down his throat. Just that much movement made his arm throb.

'I am in the truck,' he said. 'Where are we?'

'Exactly where you left off,' she smiled. 'The doctors didn't want to move the trucks with the injuries we've got.'

He tried to stir himself to make some sort of command decision, to make himself care deeply about what needed to be done; but his mind felt thick and fogged and so occupied with trying to control the pain that he could not muster himself to anything.

'Who is in command?' he asked, going through the personnel in his head. Dr McCoy ranked highest below him, but he was not a military mind by any means. Lieutenant Johnson – But no, Lieutenant Johnson was dead...

'Dr McCoy is in command – and isn't he loving it?' Nurse Chapel replied with a grin lighting her face.

Spock looked at her through narrowed eyes. 'Sarcasm?' he asked after a moment.

She smiled again. 'Sarcasm,' she confirmed. 'Leonard may be perfectly happy in command of his sick bay, but he is, in his words, _a doctor, not a war general._ '

'That much is true,' Spock murmured. He lay silent for a while, trying to control the pain, trying to get his wandering mind to focus. 'The patients,' he said eventually. 'The captain?'

Her face sobered. 'The captain is stable, in the same condition as before,' she told him. 'We lost four refugees and Lieutenant Johnson in the attack. There are a few gunshot wounds from moderate to minor, which have all been treated. Our personnel escaped injury – except for poor Johnson.'

Spock made as if to nod, and stopped as the pain spiked.

'I can give you more painkiller if you need it,' the nurse offered.

'No,' he murmured. 'No, I need my mind to be clear. Your poisons interfere with my control.' He registered the slightly hurt look on her face, and murmured, 'I apologise, Miss Chapel. A turn of phrase.'

'Leonard's told me you like to refer to our medical practices as _beads and rattles_ , so I suppose I got off lightly,' she said with a quiet laugh. 'But, no, I understand. Our medicines aren't always perfect for your physiology.' She turned away from him for a moment to touch a control. 'There. I've dialled it back a little. I'd have to consult with Dr McCoy before taking you off it completely because the drug does more than just killing the pain. It's also a muscle relaxant, among other things. But I've pulled it back to the minimum dose.'

'I need to speak to McCoy,' Spock said.

She considered him for a moment, and then nodded.

'I'll go see if he's free. I'll be right back.'

She reached out a hand as if to touch him, in the gesture so many humans used in situations of comfort, but her hand stopped just before it reached him. He lay still as she clambered out of the truck, gritting his teeth against the minute shaking that her movement inevitably caused. Once the rear flap had fallen back into place he lay staring up at the ceiling, focussing on the light that hung from one of the struts that curved overhead, trying hard to minimise the influence of McCoy's potions and restore his own mental control. He needed to at least look in command of himself when the doctor arrived. It was imperative that he get back on his feet as soon as possible, and he acknowledged that he would need to rely on the doctor's good will and support for that to happen.

He lay listening to the sounds outside, but there was very little to hear. He realised he did not know what time of day it was, or even how long he had been asleep. The doctor's drugs had robbed him of his time sense. He made himself aware of his body, trying to discover how long he had been asleep. He could feel that he had been fitted with a catheter, but he didn't think his bowels had opened. That spoke, perhaps, of a number of hours asleep, but not days. He felt dehydrated, but that sensation was quite common to him after surgery, and told him little. He rubbed his thumb across the nails of his right hand, and didn't think they had grown appreciably, but when he painfully lifted the same arm to touch his fingers to his cheek he felt the slight rasp of stubble. On estimate, he thought he had been asleep for around twelve hours, and in that case it was probably night or very early morning outside. That would account for the quiet of his surroundings.

A moment later the rear flap of the truck was pulled aside, and McCoy hauled himself into the space, looking tired.

'Christine said you wanted to speak with me,' he said, moving carefully across the truck-bed and then sitting down cross-legged at Spock's side.

Spock was focussed on the place where the fabric flap was settling heavily back into place. He had caught a glimpse of half-light, and was trying to work out if it were raining. He looked back to McCoy and saw the evidence of a dew of raindrops in his hair, glistening in the light from above. It was either misty or raining with very fine, light drops.

'Has she been sitting with me all night?' he asked.

'Would you expect her to leave it to someone else?' McCoy asked him. 'Yes, she's been sitting with you all night. I came in and told her to get some sleep. I think she slept a little, but she's not left your side. But I guess that kind of devotion goes right over your Vulcan head, doesn't it? It's not logical.'

Spock lifted an eyebrow. 'On the contrary, Doctor, I quite understand,' he said quietly.

'Well then, I hope you thanked her,' McCoy said rather grudgingly, as if he were put out by Spock's understanding.

'I have not had that chance as yet,' Spock replied.

Of course, the doctor had probably got very little sleep himself. He was probably highly stressed. That would account for his combative and cantankerous attitude. Spock sighed internally. Neither of them were in the best place for this interaction. He would have to start off gradually.

'How long have I been unconscious, Doctor?' he asked first.

'Oh, about fifteen hours, Spock,' McCoy replied. 'That's from putting you out on the road until now. We worked on your arm for about three hours and you've been in recovery since then.'

Spock resisted nodding.

'The painkillers are interfering with my own ability to control the pain. Can you reduce them?'

McCoy turned to look at the display on the drip. 'Christine said she'd turned them down to minimal, Spock. I can't do more than that. You need these drugs in your system right now.'

'These drugs turn my stomach and inhibit my natural ability to control,' Spock replied rather tersely.

'I can't do more than that,' McCoy repeated rather more firmly. 'Next question, Spock.'

Spock acknowledged defeat without a word. 'Is our location secure?' he asked.

'As it can be. I've moved the people I can into temporary shelter in some of the less damaged buildings, keeping two of the trucks as high dependency medical units. The fact you're in one on your own should tell you something about the severity of your injury, Spock. You almost bled to death out there. We only had two pints of reserve blood to pump back into you, and you lost about four. You're not going to be back on your feet for a while, and that arm is going to remain broken and severely damaged until we can get you to proper twenty-third century medical facilities. In real terms, that won't be until we're on the _Enterprise_ , because it'll require further surgery, and that's where your unique store of T negative and human factor blood is kept. Most Fleet hospitals aren't exactly swimming in T negative blood, you know.'

'I am aware of that fact,' Spock replied in a level voice. It was not exactly news to him that his blood type was unique. T negative was rare enough, without the added human factors. 'Then the arm will be effectively useless until we can return to the ship.'

'That's what I said, Spock,' McCoy returned rather tartly. 'Which means I'm lumped with command, and – '

'Not at all, Doctor,' Spock said, making an attempt to look more together than he felt. It was hard when one was lying flat and the slightest movement sent sore pain ricocheting through one's body. 'I am quite capable of command as long as officers report to me.'

'Like Jim was before – ' The doctor trailed off, both of them becoming sober at the thought of the captain.

'Nurse Chapel said his condition was unchanged.'

'Yes, unchanged,' McCoy said, sounding weary.

'Have you managed to contact Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye since the attack?'

At that the doctor's face became more sober still. 'No, I haven't, and that worries me, Spock. Does that mean the hospital's been taken over by the W.C.G.? Does it mean they're injured or dead?'

Spock frowned a little. 'It may mean neither of those things, but we must be aware of the possibility. Give me my communicator, please, Doctor.'

McCoy hesitated, then reached behind him and passed over the device. Spock weighed it in his hand for a moment before flipping it open.

'Spock to Ndiaye,' he said.

Static crackled. He tried again, calling both Ndiaye and Gietz, with no response. He realised with a brief spike of frustration that he had no free hand with which to tune the device or extend its range. He laid the communicator on his stomach and attempted to twiddle the dial, but there was still no response.

'I've tried all of that,' McCoy commented.

'The device indicates that the signal is not even reaching its destination. It is as if the communicators have been destroyed,' Spock said, tapping his finger on the smooth shell of the instrument.

'Which means they're probably dead,' McCoy said pessimistically.

'It means no such thing,' Spock corrected him rather sharply. 'There is no point in uninformed speculation.'

He closed his eyes, hit suddenly by a wave of exhaustion. McCoy must have noticed the response, because he heard the doctor's medical scanner whirring.

'I'm all right,' he said quickly, opening his eyes again, although he felt as if the truck bed were rocking beneath him.

'Like hell you are,' McCoy replied grimly. He pulled a hypo out of his bag and changed the setting, and before Spock could protest he had depressed it against his uninjured arm. 'Go back to sleep, Spock,' he said firmly. 'Like it or not, I'm in command for now.'

Spock opened his mouth to protest, but the words never came. A great sense of warmth and comfort overwhelmed him, pushing the pain back to a dull sensation, and he fell into sleep.


	18. Chapter 18

Ndiaye and Gietz were led up stairs through four levels of the vast hospital before they reached the communications room.

'I'm sorry, we have to save the elevators for patients,' Captain Liana explained as they climbed. 'We have frequent power cuts and need to make sure the batteries are full at all times.'

'I understand,' Ndiaye assured him, trying to suppress the need to gasp as they moved up the stairs at a half run. When he was on the ship he went to the gym almost every day, but ironically since being down here on the planet his fitness regime had suffered because he had no time to work out.

'I'll carry you if you need me need to, old man,' Gietz offered from behind.

Ndiaye picked up his pace.

'Only one more flight,' Liana assured them.

At least he had already called through with the W.C.G. threat to Commander Spock, but there was almost nothing they could do to help their people without managing to contact forces outside the area, or at best outside the planet. Ndiaye longed for the simple efficiency of a transporter beam to just snatch their people out of this place and bring them to somewhere safe; but of course everyone here would probably give over their life savings for the same, if it would help their friends and family.

'This is it,' Liana told him, opening a door onto a moderately sized room on the top floor of the hospital.

The place had great glass windows giving views out over the half-destroyed city. Ndiaye could see black, roiling smoke rising in some places, some plumes with the red of fire at their base, and some areas of the city looked as if they had been crushed by a giant's foot.

'This is what we face. This is the destruction at the hands of the Western Caboli Group,' Liana said, following his gaze.

Ndiaye resisted answering. He knew that a large amount of the destruction out there was the responsibility of the C.C.G.. Both sides were killing, and neither seemed likely to stop any time soon. For a moment he ignored the rows of benches and communications equipment and the four or five people manning them, and just stepped forward to the window to stare out at the carnage.

'There are people in that,' he murmured.

Gietz came to stand beside him, and put a hand on his arm. 'I swear to all the gods, when we get back to the ship I'm going to do something to stop this,' he said.

That galvanised Ndiaye. 'The first thing we need to do is get back to the ship,' he said. 'Captain Liana?'

The captain gestured towards the banks of communication equipment, then walked over to a man in dark uniform sitting near the end of one of the consoles. 'Ardal, these men are from the assistance team sent down by the Federation of Planets,' he said, and the man turned to look up at them curiously. 'They need to contact their ship. You're ordered to give them every help they need.' He looked back to Ndiaye. 'I'll get Shiday to put out a general broadcast to troops advising them of your people's probable location. If we can, we'll have people out looking for them. It all depends on where they are in relation to W.C.G. forces, of course.'

'Thank you,' Ndiaye said with real gratitude.

The man stood up and lifted his hand in greeting. 'Well, I've never met an alien,' he said, looking the two humans up and down. 'But you look like you could be cousins of mine.'

Ndiaye laughed. 'Have you ever heard of Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development? We come across a lot of planets that are curiously like our own.'

'No, I've never heard it,' the man said.

'Maybe one day I'll get a chance to explain it,' Ndiaye said. 'Meanwhile, what can you tell me about the equipment here? Do you have anything that works via subspace?'

The man looked at him as if baffled. 'Our equipment works on radio waves or fibre optic transmission,' he said.

Ndiaye rubbed a hand over his face. He had aced communications at the academy, but not history.

'Satellites,' Gietz put in. 'They use satellites. I know that Chekov bitched about them for almost an hour at dinner after we came into orbit; satellites at all altitudes, and he had to plot an orbit that would avoid them all.'

'Satellites!' Ndiaye slapped a hand against his thigh. 'Ardal, are your satellite communications working?'

'Perfectly,' the man nodded. 'We've got a transmitter right here, up on the roof in a camouflaged location. We have to be careful so we don't make the hospital into a target.'

'The enemy don't know you have an army communications base here?' Ndiaye asked apprehensively.

'I'm sure they suspect, but they won't risk an attack on a building like this. That would send the entire conflict up to another level of hell.'

Gietz exchanged a glance with Ndiaye. It was hard to imagine this war reaching another level of hell, but perhaps the deliberate bombing of a hospital would be it. Ndiaye felt momentarily furious that these people had set up a base in this place; that they were toying with these people's lives after they had already been through so much.

He pushed away that anger. It wouldn't help right now. He could do with some Spock-like control.

He took his communicator from his hip and opened it up. It chirruped, and he closed it again.

'You know, Zelig, perhaps we can do something with the communicators, via the orbiting satellites,' he said.

Gietz took his own communicator out and looked at it doubtfully. 'Do you think so?'

Ndiaye shrugged. 'I know one thing for certain. We're not going to punch through any interference thrown out by the Romulans with these communicators alone. They're exactly what their blocking devices will be calculated for – if that's what it is that's stopping us reaching anyone. But perhaps a combination, putting together the range and power of the communicators with primitive radio waves – perhaps that will get through.' He looked back to Ardal. 'Sir, do you have microtools that I could use? And can I cannibalise one of your radio units?'

'Certainly I have tools,' he nodded. He looked around the room briefly, taking stock of the devices there, then nodded towards an empty desk near the window. 'You can use anything on there, and just ask us for any help you need.'

'Thank you,' Ndiaye said gratefully, reaching out to shake the man's hand, before remembering that the gesture was totally alien here. He raised his hand in greeting instead. 'Thank you so much.'

In a few minutes he was sitting at the desk near the window, tools in hand, carefully dismantling one of the radio transmitters there so that he could familiarise himself with the insides of the device. It had been a long time since he had studied any of these things, but the more he peeled away the more he remembered.

'It's going to take both communicators to get the strength,' he muttered. 'They'll be useless for calling the rest of the unit once I've done it.'

'Better call through to Commander Spock to let him know,' Gietz suggested.

Ndiaye turned from the half-dismantled radio unit, weighing his screwdriver in his hand.

'You call, Zelig,' he said, 'and I'll crack on with this, okay?'

'Okay,' the German nodded. He took his communicator and walked over to the window, flipping it open. Ndiaye listened idly as the man called, 'Gietz to Commander Spock... Gietz to Commander Spock. Come in.' There was no reply, and after a moment he tried, 'Gietz to Dr McCoy. Gietz to Dr McCoy.' Then he tried, 'Gietz to Lieutenant Johnson.'

After those three attempts he snapped the communicator shut and turned back to the bench where Ndiaye was working.

'Nothing,' he said, sounding puzzled.

Ndiaye took the instrument and turned it over in his hand.

'There's nothing wrong at this end, I'm sure. The battery levels are fine, it's sending out a strong signal. It must be something at their end. Interference, or – '

'Or – ' Gietz echoed in an ominous tone.

'There's no point in getting ahead of ourselves,' Ndiaye said steadily. Gietz was always prone to jump to the worst conclusions. 'There could be any number of reasons why we're not getting through. But I need to take these apart now, so we'll just have to be out of contact.'

'I don't like that,' Gietz said, looking as if he wanted to take the communicator back from Ndiaye.

Ndiaye drew the device just a little further out of reach. 'I don't like it either, but it might be our only chance of punching through and contacting someone outside of this planet, and I need both of the communicators to do it. One alone just won't have the range. I need to use them to amplify the radio wave into subspace, and, really, these devices are tiny when you measure them against the vastness of space.'

'Then is there any hope at all?' Gietz asked him, sinking down into a chair beside Ndiaye and rubbing his hands through his rather tangled brown hair.

Ndiaye slapped a hand against his shoulder. 'Little boy, there's always hope. After all, it's me on the case, isn't it? Next best thing to Spock, I'm sure.'

'Couldn't Spock have done this with the radios and transmitters we found in houses along the way?'

'Spock had his fingers in most of the technical devices we found along the way. We didn't find anything with this broadcasting power, Zelig,' Ndiaye laughed. 'They were all vid screens – what did they call them on Earth? - tel-visions, transistor radios. Nothing with satellite capability. They can transmit clear around this planet with what they have here, and out into space too, albeit slowly. The communicators will provide the boost in the speed, upgrading the radio signal to subspace, so we can get the signal far enough out to bypass those Romulan sharks, if that's what it is up there cutting us off.'

Gietz glanced up toward the ceiling as if looking toward space, and then shook his head, apparently ruminating on the futility of it all.

'What can I do to help?' he asked finally.

'Apart from going back in time and paying attention in Communications lectures?' Ndiaye teased him. 'Here, take this,' he said, putting Gietz's communicator in his hand. 'It needs stripping down to base components. Don't attempt the minor electronics without me, but you can get the casing off. Just be careful. Don't wrench anything out. Don't cut anything. Don't pull anything apart. It should all come open with these screwdrivers.'

'And God invented the screw,' Gietz murmured.

'You bet your life he did. They could have put these things together with magnetic impulse connectors, but I think somewhere some straight-thinking person decided they should make these devices accessible even with primitive technology; otherwise we may as well be battering at the casing with rocks – and that wouldn't do much good either, since these things are more hardy than cockroaches.'

'I think I'm going to need to get Dr McCoy to do some work on my eyes,' Gietz muttered as he bent over the desk to see the tiny screws. 'I'm going blind in my old age.'

Ndiaye blew some dust away from the part he was holding, and set it down carefully in a tray. 'Your work'll go faster if you don't complain,' he said.

It took some hours to completely strip down both the communicators and the radio equipment, and three more hours for Ndiaye to painstakingly put together a device that he thought might work. Then he had to persuade Captain Ardal to let them take over use of the huge satellite dish on the roof of the hospital, and reroute enough power to boost the communicator signal as far as possible.

'What if we burn out their communications dish?' Gietz asked in an undertone as Ndiaye was kneeling up on the open roof space connecting the cables.

Gietz was holding a small light, carefully shaded and angled downwards so as not to shine up into the sky where it might be seen by enemy reconnaissance aircraft. It was dark now, and the view over the city was awe inspiring; a pool of wide dark patches occasionally broken with pinpoint lights, and in too many places blooming with the rich smoky red of burning. Shell fire and tracer fire sent lines across the dark sky, and to Ndiaye's eyes they looked disturbingly near.

'We run,' Ndiaye responded under his breath, then he said, 'We won't burn it out, I'm sure. I'm pretty sure. If we do, I'll fix it.'

He felt high with the success of the modifications he had performed. True, the mesh of the communicators and the radio transmitter looked like a technological version of Frankenstein's monster, but it didn't have to look pretty. It just had to work.

A metal door creaked and clanged open, and Ndiaye looked around to see Captain Ardal walking out onto the roof, picking his way very carefully over the surface in the dim light.

'Are you ready?' Ardal asked, coming around to look over Ndiaye's shoulder. 'We can't have our communications off line for any longer than necessary.'

Ndiaye took out his tricorder and scanned the connections, shading the screen with his hand.

'We're ready,' he said. 'Let's get back inside and try this.'

He walked back down the narrow stairs from the roof with some trepidation. So much rested on this one attempt at communication. If it didn't work it was entirely possibly the communicators would be left useless, and they would have even less chance of contacting anyone off world. The thought ran through his mind briefly that it might be easier to get into one of their primitive liquid fuel rockets, and blast out of the atmosphere, then knock on the hull of an orbiting ship. What if the _Enterprise_ wasn't up there? What if no one was up there, or there were only Romulans to intercept their call?

'I can't encrypt it,' he muttered to Gietz as they walked back into the communications room. 'Whatever I send, the Romulans will be able to read just as easily as any Federation ship. It's not like we can even do it in a non-Standard language, because their translators will put it right into Rihannsu...'

'We just need to do it,' Gietz said stolidly. 'It's our only chance. You're not giving away great military secrets. You're requesting help for a handful of Starfleet officers. That's all.'

Ndiaye sighed, flexed his hands, and sat down in front of the radio transmitter. The communicators were so far taken apart that they were completely embedded in the antiquated machine, and could not even be seen. He slipped on a pair of padded earphones, picked up the old fashioned microphone, held it before his mouth, and flicked the switch on the unit.

A scream of static shrilled into his ears, and he recoiled instinctively. He saw Gietz looking at him in alarm. Gietz wasn't wearing the earphones but had probably heard something of the sound. Ndiaye smiled reassuringly, and reached out to tune the dial. He heard odd blips of communications, and he listened intently, trying to work out if he were listening to ground communications or to something further out. Slowly he dialled up the power until the reach was as good as it was going to get. Then he leant in to the microphone and called, 'Starfleet Officer Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye calling any Federation ship. Starfleet Officer Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye calling any Federation ship. Please respond.'

He stayed silent for a few moments, waiting. Gietz was crouching beside him, so close and so eager that he could feel his breath against his neck. He adjusted a few controls carefully.

'Starfleet Officer Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye calling any Federation ship,' he tried again. 'Starfleet Officer Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye calling any Federation ship.'

He waited again. And then –

'This is Lieutenant Uhura on the Starship _Enterprise_ ,' came the smooth, composed reply. The impression of calm was ruined when she added in a suddenly choked voice, 'I can't believe you're alive!'

'I'm alive,' Ndiaye confirmed, flashing Gietz a wide grin and a thumbs up. He mouthed _the Enterprise_ , then turned back to the microphone. 'Uhura – '

'Scott here,' the brusque tone of the chief engineer cut in. 'Laddie, are ye all all right down there?'

Ndiaye hesitated, mentally running through a list of the dead and the injured, and a lump rose tightly in his throat. 'Mr Scott, I don't know how long this connection will last. Gietz and I are at the Initial Medical Services main hospital in Sanardo. The rest of the party are some five miles to the west, and may now be behind W.C.G. lines. We need urgent evacuation!'

'Och, lad, we're working on it,' Scott replied with a tone of sorrow. 'There are seven Romulan birds of prey up here and they gave us such a hiding that we had to retreat for repairs. They've been blocking all communications. I don't know how you got through...'

'I'll explain when I see you,' Ndiaye replied briefly, afraid that the communications unit was close to burning out. He thought he could smell burning. He put the microphone aside and said to Gietz, 'Take a look at those connections, will you? They might need cooling.'

'Listen, laddie, we all know that big birds have big ears,' Scott said through the earphones, 'but d'ye remember the German lakes, lad?'

'What?' Ndiaye asked, his forehead creasing in confusion. And then suddenly he remembered, and grinned. 'Yes, Mr Scott. I remember the German lakes.' He looked up at the transmitter, which Gietz was frantically trying to cool. 'Listen, Commander, this transmitter won't hold out much longer.'

'Aye lad, well we'll know where to find you,' Scott replied warmly.

'Good,' Ndiaye said fervently. 'Ndiaye out!'

Rather than cutting the connection he just reached out to pull the plug from the back of the machine. Then he leant back in his chair, and sighed.

Gietz stared at him. 'You remember the German lakes?' he asked, looking bewildered.

Ndiaye remembered that he could have heard very little of the other side of the conversation.

'That was Mr Scott on the _Enterprise_ ,' he told his friend. 'A few weeks before we beamed down here I was having a long discussion with Mr Scott about Earth history. He was telling me about a fascinating invention that the British developed during the Second World War against – ' He broke off, looking a little awkward.

'Against us foul Germans, I know,' Gietz replied impatiently. 'A lot of water's gone under the bridge, Derek. What about the German lakes?'

'It wasn't so much lakes as reservoirs. They developed a bouncing bomb, and they swept in by night and destroyed the reservoirs. I think Mr Scott was telling me, in a way that the Romulans couldn't possibly understand, that it's going to be all right.'


	19. Chapter 19

McCoy had moved the convoy on after two days, trying to find somewhere that would sustain so many people in need of care and medical aid. There was no point in trying to push forward, since W.C.G. troops were overtaking them all the time, and they lived in daily fear of the next troop of soldiers coming through. Despite the fact that they officially took no sides, they had been working almost exclusively with C.C.G. casualties up until now and the previous attack showed that the W.C.G. had little respect for their medical banners. The stress of it weighed on him like a physical weight.

The captain was still pale and still, still deep in coma, and he was certain that he would be until he was back on the ship. Spock, of course, had defied all medical expectations and was up on his feet with his arm in a solid cast that was strapped across his chest, pumped so full of antibiotics that McCoy joked he could start a factory for it from his urine. Despite Spock's attempt to appear perfectly sanguine about his injury, the doctor could see the pain and fatigue on his face. He slept longer and tried to perform his duties as commanding officer with the minimum of physical effort.

They had retraced their steps a little and then moved further to the north, battling through destroyed roads. Finally they come across a wide plaza with some intact buildings and a working water supply, and that was the best they could do. The trouble was that the open space and water attracted everyone, not just them. The doctor wanted to move on, but the humanitarian in him demanded that they stay, where there were so many people who needed help, and it was obvious that it would be bad for their patients to keep moving them without a rest.

McCoy had never seen such a sight before as what had developed this morning, after an attack a little way to the east. People had flooded here, perhaps hearing of a place where there was a doctor, perhaps just fleeing to the closest open space. The plaza was filled with the casualties of this senseless, senseless war; children wailing and parents shrunken into grey, wordless grief. The stench of it; the stench of shit that was everywhere, and the sweat and the rotting food and the miserable swathes of mud, that no one mentioned when they spoke of war zones. The dank, damp cold of it, and the hate that piled down from the grey sheet of sky above, that pierced even the tiniest child with its merciless weather no matter how bad the pneumonia had become or how hard they cried.

And there was Spock, somehow unconscious of babble around him or the sleet that was beginning to fall, or the pain from his arm that would cramp any normal person onto the ground, sitting against a wall and holding in his good arm a three year old child, riveting its attention onto only himself by some kind of Vulcan mind skill. He was singing, in the lowest of voices, a song of unimaginable alien softness. The child was staring only at his lips, seemingly following each word, clinging on to them as if they were its only reality, and its eyelids were drifting, flickering open, drifting closed again…

McCoy had been hurrying from patient to patient all morning, barking out orders, dressing wounds, desperately hoping that their supplies wouldn't run out. Fabric needed to be sterilised to make bandages, resources needed to be fed into the med-generator. There was only so much they could do, and he felt as if he had not stopped for hours, but he was arrested by the sight of Spock. He stopped still next to him, just staring.

He could tell that Spock was aware of his presence, but the Vulcan did not look up, did nothing to break the connection between him and the child. McCoy lifted his scanner, and then registered in the slight tensing of Spock's body that he needed silence. The doctor dropped his arm back to his side, and waited. Spock continued singing for a moment longer, his voice growing quieter, and then he stopped. The child exhaled slowly, but did not wake. Spock waited a moment, and then looked up.

'Spock, I didn't know you had it in you,' McCoy teased him in an undertone. 'May I use the scanner now?'

Spock nodded silently, and the doctor extended the scanner. He read slight malnutrition, but no injuries.

'Where did you find her?' he asked.

'She was wandering alone amongst the injured,' Spock murmured. 'I could get no clear information from her, but she was obviously exhausted.'

'Well, I'll store the scan of her DNA in here and if I come across a match maybe we can get her back to her people,' McCoy said. 'That was good work, Spock.'

Spock adjusted his position very slightly, and the child groaned. Her breathing hitched and shuddered every few breaths, as if she had fallen asleep crying. McCoy was suddenly reminded forcefully of his own daughter, Joanna, in her infant years, and his heart swelled with pain for what this child was going through. Perhaps she would never be reunited with her family. Perhaps they were dead. What was there in place to look after children like this? He felt a spike of the determination that flooded him at irregular intervals here, that when they were off this planet they would _do_ something – really do something, something more than sending down a handful of medical personnel to patch up wounds. They needed to stop the wounds before they were made.

He sat down next to the Vulcan, assigning himself a momentary break. His feet ached. For a moment he indulged in a daydream of lying back under a tree in hot Georgia sunshine with a drink in his hand. It was too cold for that, though. The weather alternated between chilled rain and sleet.

'I guess we need to get her under cover,' he said after a moment. 'I'll take her into the shelter, Spock.'

Spock glanced over at the building they were using to shelter the worst patients. Some of the buildings around the plaza were occupied, and some were too damaged to use, but this one, apparently once some kind of art gallery, was relatively unscathed. He began to try to stand up with the girl in his arms, and failed.

'No, let me take her, Spock,' McCoy said firmly. He slipped his arms in under the hot weight of the child, and turned her to his chest. 'I want you to come inside too. I need to give that arm a check-up. Do you need a hand up?'

Spock lifted an eyebrow, looking at the sleeping child in McCoy's arm. 'Even if I did, it is unlikely that _you_ would be able to give me one.'

He pushed himself to his feet. The doctor watched him critically, noticing the pallor of his face.

'Are you ever going to be honest with me about your pain levels?' he asked as they walked into the building.

'The Vulcan reaction to pain is unlikely to ever tally with human perceptions,' Spock said evasively.

It was a relief to the doctor to move from the chaos of outside to the relative stability of the ward they had set up in the abandoned gallery. It was a strange scene – marble floors and fine art on the walls, and patients laid out in rows on the floor – but it did at least speak of some kind of medical order.

'We need to find more things to serve as beds,' McCoy commented.

Spock looked around the room, letting his gaze settle on patient after patient, most of whom were lying on the thinnest of barriers between them and the cold floor.

'Perhaps next time we should set up in an abandoned bed store,' he commented.

McCoy laughed suddenly, trying to keep the noise quiet because of the sleeping child, but feeling real joy in his chest at the Vulcan's comment.

'I was not attempting a joke,' Spock responded, looking slightly puzzled.

'Well, you managed one,' McCoy grinned. He looked about and saw a woman sitting near the wall, wrapped in a blanket that looked as if it were made from a torn-down curtain. It was the same woman that Spock had rescued from the rubble, so long ago, it felt. Her arm was still encased in a plaster cast that was dirtier each day. 'Maia's still with us,' he commented.

'I think she is reluctant to leave the relative safety of our protection,' Spock nodded.

'Well then, maybe she can help,' the doctor said, taking the child over to her. He crouched down before her. 'Maia, Spock found this little waif outside. She's not injured. Can you take care of her?'

A look of softness replaced the almost permanent look of slight suspicion that the woman had, and she nodded, pushing aside some of the blanket with her good arm to allow the doctor to set the child down.

'She's Western Caboli,' the woman commented.

It still amazed McCoy how easily these people could tell each other apart.

'Regardless, she's done nothing,' McCoy said firmly. 'She's scared and alone, and she needs someone to care for her.'

'Yes, I know,' she said in rather a dull tone, gazing at the child's sleeping face. 'I will care for her.'

McCoy took a moment to run his scanner over the woman's arm, then turned to Spock.

'Your turn, Spock. I want to give you a proper examination. Let's go somewhere private.'

He took the Vulcan into one of the smaller gallery rooms off the main vast chamber. This was where they had chosen to put Jim, afraid that without some measure of isolation he might contract a virus from the constant flux of patients. Spock sat on a chair near where the captain lay, his eyes on his human friend while McCoy carefully helped him remove his shirt.

'Maia is also Western Caboli, Doctor,' he commented quietly.

McCoy glanced back at the door. 'Well, she kept that quiet,' he said, feeling amazed.

'Do you blame her?' Spock asked him, meeting his eyes.

'No,' McCoy said after a moment. 'No, I don't.'

He looked critically at the skin around Spock's shoulder, where it emerged from the plaster cast. It looked rather green and puffy.

'I'm just afraid of infection setting in, something resistant to the antibiotics,' he muttered as he probed the skin with his fingertips.

Spock winced, but composed his face as soon as the doctor looked at him.

'Painful, huh?'

The Vulcan lifted an eyebrow. 'You would be astonished if I told you it was not,' he commented.

'Will you take some painkillers?'

Spock shook his head. 'I want my mind to remain clear, Doctor. You know that.'

'Yeah, don't I know it,' McCoy grumbled. 'Half my patients are asking for doses that'd kill them, and here you are working with a shattered arm on nothing but water and vegetables. Well, I need to give you this,' he said, pulling out a hypo and attaching a capsule. ' _Trust me_ , Spock,' he said at the Vulcan's expression. 'It's not a pain killer, just your regular antibiotics and a muscle relaxant.'

He let the dose hiss into Spock's neck, just above the sore shoulder. The muscle relaxant, he hoped, would perform some of the functions of a painkiller.

'Now, you might feel a bit sleepy,' McCoy warned him casually, 'so I want you to stay here for now. There's not much you can be doing outside anyway.'

Spock shot him a look of betrayal, but it was obvious that the shot was already starting to take effect. He wouldn't fall asleep, but he would definitely feel relaxed, and would be much better off inside. McCoy helped him over to the pile of cloths that he was sleeping on at the moment – he always chose to sleep near the captain – and made sure he was sitting down, before leaving him.

He met Christine Chapel on the way back outside.

'You should take a break too,' he said pointedly.

'Too?' she asked. 'Who else have you been corralling into getting off their feet?'

'Oh, just Spock. I slipped him some metahazmaline. With that arm, it was high time he had a rest.'

He saw her glance move past him to skim over the room inside.

'He's in with the captain,' he told her. 'He'll be fine. He might fall asleep, but most likely he'll just chill for a while.'

She laughed briefly. 'The image of Spock, chilling,' she said. 'You're right, though. He's been on his feet since dawn. He should still be in a hospital bed.'

'Try telling _him_ that,' McCoy said cynically. 'Meanwhile, we'll just have to get on without him for the next few hours. Has anyone had any joy reaching Ndiaye and Gietz yet?'

She shook her head soberly. 'We've been trying every half hour or so. Nothing. Leonard, I'm afraid that might mean – '

He pressed his hand onto her arm, stopping her mid-sentence. 'There's no point in hanging on _mights_ ,' he told her firmly. 'It might mean any number of things.' He looked out at the plaza filled with tired natives, casualties, children and adults alike huddling together. 'You know, I think we've pretty much got to the nadir of this war. How much worse can it be? We can only get better from here.'

Christine looked up at the sky, her arms folded across her chest and her face sceptical. 'I can't believe something worse isn't going to rain down from there,' she commented.

McCoy saw a curious gold sparkle reflected in her blue eyes, and for a moment he was filled with fear that she was right, and something worse was coming. But then he saw her face change from pessimism to open surprise. He heard the building hum of a transporter, and he wheeled to see the shapes of seven officers materialising in the lobby behind him. As the forms gained shape, he saw Scotty at their head, with Ndiaye and Gietz just behind him, a solid wall of red against the gallery behind.


	20. Chapter 20

As the landing party materialised just inside the gallery Christine found herself transfixed, unable to move until she was certain of who it was and where they were from. It was almost impossible to believe that help had arrived at last.

'Dear god, isn't it about time!' she exclaimed once the figures were solid enough to identify. She ran forwards towards the just-materialised landing party as if she could hardly believe in its existence.

'Christine, lassie, is that you?' Scott asked, holding out a hand to her as if he needed to touch her to confirm who she was.

She looked down at her faded, many-times-washed Paladasian clothing and ran a hand rather self-consciously through her dull, tangled hair.

'Aye, it's me,' she replied, echoing the Scottish accent, the smile threatening to split her face in half. She came forward to hug the chief engineer, just to feel the reality of him.

'Scotty, where the hell have you been?' McCoy burst in as they parted, seeming torn between joy and anger. 'Dear god, man, we've been weeks in this goddamn hell hole!'

'Och, well, the seven Romulan birds of prey up there didnae like the idea of us hanging around the planet, and they thrashed us almost to breaking point. We only just limped away with our lives, Doctor, but when we came back with four ships of the line they had second thoughts.'

'And it took you over a _month_?' the doctor spluttered.

'If you'd seen the damage we took, Doctor, you wouldnae be questioning it,' Scott said sadly. 'Och, my poor wee bairns...' He stood introspective for a moment, then looked up. 'But Ndiaye here says the captain's in need of urgent evacuation?'

Christine flashed a smile at Ndiaye and he lifted his hand in greeting.

'We're _all_ in need of urgent evacuation. God knows when they're going to start bombing and shelling and shooting again,' McCoy began angrily.

'Doctor,' Christine said soothingly, putting a hand on his arm. 'Scotty, the captain's in here. And Mr Spock. They both need transfer to sickbay.'

She hurried with the doctor and Scott towards the small room where the captain lay, while behind them Ndiaye started to disperse the men they had brought with them.

'We'll have to take them up in shifts, get a triage going,' McCoy muttered. 'Take the worst of the native casualties up too...'

'Doctor, we've got a sick bay team waiting in the transporter room for our people, but emigration procedures advise – ' Scott began.

'Emigration procedures be damned!' McCoy snapped across him. 'These people need treatment, and they're going to get it, somewhere where they and we aren't risking being blown up for our trouble.'

They fell into silence as they entered Kirk's room, with the kind of reverence which is reserved for the very sick.

'Och, the poor captain,' Scott sighed as he saw him.

Christine let McCoy go to the captain to prepare him for transport. Scott called up to the ship to make sure they were ready for casualties in the transporter room, while she went to Spock. He was lying flat on his makeshift bed, eyes closed.

'Mr Spock,' she said. ' _Spock._ '

He blinked, and his eyes opened. For a moment he looked disoriented, then he focussed on Christine's blue eyes.

'Nurse,' he murmured. 'The doctor – '

'Slipped you a Mickey Finn, I know,' she nodded. She ignored Spock's look of confusion at that phrase, knowing that he would store it in his memory and research it later. 'Mr Spock, Mr Scott is here. The ship's back!'

Spock sat up, galvanised by that news, looking about him and seeing that Mr Scott was, indeed, in the room. She helped him to his feet, watching him carefully for signs of instability, since the muscle relaxant the doctor had given him was a powerful one.

'Doctor, shall I accompany Mr Spock and the captain to sick bay while you process the other casualties?' she asked, feeling slightly concerned as Spock swayed on his feet. 'Dr M'Benga's on duty, Scotty?' she asked.

'Aye, he's been preparing the sick bay for ye,' Scott nodded quickly.

'All right,' McCoy said, looking around the room as if checking for any final things that needed doing before the beam out. 'All right, Christine. Take them both straight down to sick bay, and have med teams waiting to transport more people down there.'

Christine nodded, and pulled her communicator out of her pocket. ' _Enterprise,_ lock in on my signal and beam up myself, Mr Spock, and Captain Kirk. The captain will need immediate transfer to a gurney.'

'Acknowledged, Lieutenant,' came the crisp English voice of Kyle in the transporter room. Despite the seriousness of the situation Christine felt another smile burst over her face.

She went through another level of disbelief and then acknowledgement of reality as the transporter beam gripped them and they materialised in the transporter room of the _Enterprise_ , many miles above the planet's surface. Something suddenly released between her shoulder blades, a tension that had been there for so long she was more aware of its sudden absence than she had been of its presence. This time it was Spock who steadied her as she suddenly wavered on her feet.

'Nurse, are you quite all right?' he asked in concern.

'I – almost can't believe it,' she admitted. 'We're home.'

Spock stamped his foot a little on the floor, and the sound resonated through the room.

'I am not given to fantasy and I do not believe in shared hallucinations, Miss Chapel,' he said. 'I am confident that we are on the Starship _Enterprise_. We are, indeed, home.'

The warmth swelled in her. Then her eyes fell on the waiting medical team, with Dr M'Benga standing at their head.

'Doctor, Captain Kirk and Mr Spock need immediate transfer to sick bay,' she said, snapping into a professional attitude. 'Mr Spock would be best on a gurney too – no, Mr Spock, you could do with being off your feet with that much metahazmaline in your system,' she said firmly as the Vulcan opened his mouth to protest. 'Doctor, Captain Kirk was recovering from a serious myocardial contusion when we had to evacuate our premises, and he suffered an arrest while travelling. He's been in a coma for the last nine days.'

M'Benga took in those details coolly, as the orderlies transferred the captain and Spock to gurneys. On the trip down to sick bay she went through all of their medical details, counting things off on her fingers in her effort to remember everything correctly.

'Mr Spock will need surgery on that arm,' she concluded, pushing herself against the wall of the corridor as they met a new medical team with gurneys on their way for the next casualties. 'As for the captain...'

M'Benga looked down at Kirk, his scanner warbling. 'We'll get the captain transferred to intensive care and we'll see what we can do,' he said. He looked up at her and added in a low voice, 'Nine days is a while to be in a coma without proper medical facilities.'

Christine saw Spock turn his head sharply at those words. It wasn't often that one could speak low enough that a Vulcan didn't hear it.

'Little pitchers, doctor,' she murmured to M'Benga, almost certain that Spock wouldn't understand the reference if he did hear it.

'My ears are not particularly large, for a Vulcan,' Spock commented.

Christine flushed pink to her own, human, ears.

'My mother is human, Miss Chapel, and particularly well versed in human expressions,' he told her. 'But I remind you that I am not a child, and don't need to be protected from the reality of the captain's condition.'

They wheeled the gurneys into sick bay, and as soon as his was stationary, Spock sat up and swung his legs over the edge.

'Now, wait a moment, Mr Spock,' M'Benga cautioned him.

Christine hid a smile behind her hand. Spock showed no sign of being about to lie back down. It wasn't often that Spock obeyed medical personnel without a very good reason.

'I am quite all right, Doctor,' Spock replied, and he followed the medical team as they wheeled Kirk into a single intensive care room and transferred him to a bed. 'Do you believe the captain's condition to be very serious?' he asked gravely, watching the displays above the bed as they picked up Kirk's life signs.

'I can't possibly comment at this time, Mr Spock,' M'Benga told him firmly. 'Christine, will you get him out of here so that I can attend to the captain?'

'Oh, don't you want me to – ' she began, but M'Benga indicated the dark haired Nurse Crockett on the other side of the bed.

'Not at all, Christine,' he said. 'I've got all the details I need from you, and you look exhausted too. I want Crockett helping me here. Mr Spock is non-urgent, so take him and get him clean, changed, and settled in a bed, and then you can have a break. I want you to submit yourself for a medical exam as well before you're officially on duty.'

She felt torn between attending the captain and staying at Spock's side, but since the captain was in quite capable hands, for once she let her personal feelings rule, and she touched Spock's arm and nodded him out of the door.

'Come on, Mr Spock. Better do as the doctor says.'

'I think the doctor suggested that _you_ have a break,' Spock reminded her.

'Only after I've seen to you,' she corrected him. 'You can't get out of it that easily.'

She was well used to having to use all sorts of devious strategies to keep Spock in sick bay. Spock's compliance was, of course, grudging, but he allowed her to help him to wash and change his clothes for sick bay overalls and settle him into one of the ward beds. By this time more of the casualties from the planet had arrived, and the sick bay was busy with their presence and the doctors and nurses attending.

'I could be in my quarters,' Spock pointed out for the fifth time, as Christine sunk tiredly into a chair by his bed and closed her eyes. She sat like that for a moment, blocking out sight, ignoring the sounds, just relishing in the fact of being home. Then she opened her eyes and looked at the Vulcan again.

'Mr Spock, your arm has been shattered by a lead projectile. Dr McCoy did just the bare minimum of surgery on it, in the back of a truck of all places. That cast is covering a multitude of sins, and you are not fit to be alone in your quarters,' she told him firmly. 'Or on the bridge,' she added, knowing that really he was itching to take over command.

Spock settled back against his pillow in a show of resignation. Christine closed her eyes again, thinking about the situation on the planet below, about the ongoing fighting that had been the background of her life for weeks. She had grown so used to the constant sound of gunfire and shells and bombs, distant and close, that the quiet here was a ringing in her ears. They had to help those people. They had to bring an end to it somehow. They had to stop the endless cycle of anger and revenge that was tearing lives apart.

'It is not your battle, Miss Chapel,' Spock's deep voice intoned from beside her.

Her eyes opened, and she looked at him, startled. Had he read her mind?

'It's not my battle,' she replied wearily, 'but it doesn't mean that I don't want them to stop.'

'Your chosen profession is nurse,' he reminded her. 'Your job is to help those in medical need, to give medicines, to hold hands, to bring those who can be healed back to wellness, to be a comforting presence for those who must die. You are neither a general nor a diplomat, and you do not have responsibility for this war.'

She looked at him again, turning her head tiredly, rolling the back of her skull against the chair. She looked into his dark eyes and wondered exactly what Spock was thinking. She liked to think that she could read him, but she knew that often his thoughts were beyond her. Above all, though, Spock was a pacifist. How this conflict must have affected him. She wondered if he would accept the trauma counselling that the whole landing party should receive. She thought that he probably wouldn't.

'I have to do _something,_ ' she said, her voice cracking in desperation.

Spock met her eyes. 'As a ship, the _Enterprise_ has done something, and will do more. As an organisation, Starfleet and the Federation will do something. You are part of that, Miss Chapel.'

'Yes, I guess that I am,' she murmured.

Now she was safe she felt so very tired. She let her eyes close again, and drifted into a much needed sleep.


	21. Chapter 21

Spock's arm was still held against his body in a sling, but no longer in the antiquated but temporarily useful plaster cast as it had been on Paladas 3. The cast had been the only option where superior medical equipment hadn't been available, but since surgery on the _Enterprise_ the bone and flesh were both well on their way to healing, and a light surgical brace was all that was needed. The brace was the least of the Vulcan's concerns at the moment, since he could perform most functions with one arm and McCoy had certified him fit for shipboard duty, although not for landing party duty.

Spock's main concern today was that the doctor was intending to attempt to rouse the captain from his prolonged coma. The memories of his attempts at mental contact were strong in his mind as he made his way down to the sick bay. What had those contacts told him about Jim's mind? Even he was not sure. The meld was such a strange thing, especially in retrospect. They had given him very little idea of Jim's mental capacity, only that some capacity was still there.

He entered a sick bay that was still over-full with casualties from the planet below, since McCoy had insisted on treating as many people as possible on board. Perhaps if Spock had not been involved in the mission on the planet's surface he might have argued the decision to beam natives to the ship, but after his experience there he could not deny them the aid that they needed. Ensigns Mabbott and Gaston had been discharged, and the patients now were exclusively Paladasian.

Their feelings washed over him like a wave as he entered the ward. These human-like beings were overwhelmed by the oddness of being on a ship in space, and they were traumatised by the war and their injuries. Gladness and sadness, anger and fear, overlapped in an emotional soup. Spock closed down his shields against them and walked briskly through the ward into the captain's intensive care room, where McCoy, Dr Thompson, and Miss Chapel were all hovering at the captain's side.

'Ah, you are about to begin,' Spock said, attempting to cover the unVulcan unease which he blamed on his human side.

'Fourteen hundred sharp, as if you didn't know, Spock,' McCoy muttered. 'Aren't you supposed to be on duty?'

Spock lifted an eyebrow. 'I am on duty, Doctor,' he said, and gave no more explanation than that. He was not quite sure how he would explain the necessity of his being in sick bay in the logs, but he would have plenty of time to think through that problem in logic later.

McCoy merely gave him a look, then turned back to the captain on the bed. Since they had returned to the ship the captain's appearance had grown a little less haggard, but he still looked shockingly thin and wasted. Spock assumed that an upturn in the captain's vital signs had prompted this attempt to bring him out of his coma. The doctor had been hovering between a forceful intervention and letting nature take its course, but the longer the coma lasted the more concern there was over the captain's future.

Spock stood back near the wall and remained absolutely silent as McCoy and Thompson discussed their strategy for waking the captain. He certain did not have more knowledge on the subject than they did, and thought that silence was the best option at this critical time. He watched as McCoy attached a capsule to the drug pusher that was fitted to the intravenous drip and began to cautiously administer the medication.

'Cerebral cortex activity shows some increase,' Miss Chapel said in a level voice, her eyes fixed on the readings panel above the captain's head.

'Keep monitoring his muscle response,' McCoy murmured to Thompson.

'Nothing as yet,' Thompson replied. 'Nothing...'

'More increase in cerebral cortex activity,' Chapel said.

Spock's eyes snapped between the panel and the man on the bed. Jim's hands were lying still at his sides, one arm immobilised by the drip infuser. And then he saw something, the smallest muscle twitch in one of Kirk's fingers.

'Doctor!' he said, stepping forward, at the same that Thompson reported, 'Some muscle reaction, Leonard,' and Chapel said, 'Oh, a _big_ spike in the cerebral cortex!'

Spock could suddenly feel it, could feel the presence of his captain in the room.

'Doctor, I can feel his mind,' he said, rationalising that in this case speaking was better than silence.

'I'm pushing a little more of the amantidex,' McCoy said, his eyes fixed on the drug capsule.

And then suddenly Jim was taking in a breath like a man who had been pulled out from underwater. Spock saw his eyes jerk open, his spine arch and his chest press up off the bed. His arms strained, and suddenly McCoy and Thompson and Chapel were making a wall, clustering so close around the captain that Spock could no longer see anything but his wasted legs beneath the blanket.

'Jim! Jim!' McCoy was saying, but the captain seemed to be panicking, trying to rip his arm from the drip infuser, trying to get up off the bed.

'Doctor,' Spock said, then raised his voice, saying, 'Doctor!'

He pushed forcefully past Chapel at the head of the bed and reached out a hand to the captain's face, touching his fingers to it as the captain thrashed, his eyes wild but unseeing. The assault of emotion was almost overwhelming, and instead of trying to read it he simply projected calm and reassurance, and slowly, very slowly, the captain settled.

After a moment Spock dropped his hand, feeling mentally exhausted. The captain was lying still now, his eyes wide and bewildered, his breath coming in quick gasps.

'Jim,' McCoy said, bending close. 'Jim, can you hear me? Jim, can you understand what I'm saying?'

Spock stood watching his friend intently, waiting for any sign of recognition. The captain was lying relatively still now, only moving his head from left to right to look at the people gathered around him. Jim's eyes rested on his for a moment, flicked away, moved to Dr Thompson, to Nurse Chapel, to McCoy. Then he said in a slightly slurred voice, 'Bones?'

Spock held his relief in so tightly that he could feel his hands shaking where they were clenched at his sides. He closed his eyes momentarily, then opened them again, moving forward a little so that he was closer to his friend.

'Jim,' McCoy said. He pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down near Jim's head, then looked up at Dr Thompson and Christine Chapel. 'Look, can you two go back out to the ward, give us a little space? I'll hit the button if I need you, but I think the captain would prefer privacy.'

Spock stood very still, noticing that he was not included in McCoy's request. After the doctor and nurse filed out Spock grabbed a chair of his own and brought it to the other side of the captain's bed.

'Bones?' Kirk said again.

He looked bewildered, and Spock noticed again that slight slur to his voice. He wanted to touch his hand to the captain, not just to give him physical reassurance but also mental, but he was aware that McCoy might not want that kind of interference. It would be better for Kirk's mind to be unadulterated with Spock's presence right now.

'Bones, what happened?' Jim asked. 'I was on the bridge...'

McCoy exchanged a glance with Spock, then said quietly, 'It's not unusual to experience a small amount of memory loss, Spock. Don't worry.'

Kirk looked suddenly at Spock, as if seeing him for the first time. 'Well, Spock,' he smiled. 'Visiting hour already?'

Spock noticed a small amount of loss of muscle control on the right side of Jim's face as he smiled. He was grateful that as a Vulcan his concern did not show on his own face.

'Good afternoon, Jim,'he said, wary of saying anything of which McCoy might disapprove.

'Jim, do you remember Paladas 3?' McCoy asked carefully.

Jim shook his head. 'I was on the bridge, making my morning log, and – Damn, it was the Tellarites, wasn't it?'

Spock recalled clearly an event two months ago when they had encountered a Tellarite ship during morning shift. The Tellarites had been argumentative and verbally abusive, but that was par for the course, and they had passed on without further issue.

'Stardate 9393.8,' he said to McCoy in an undertone. 'Two months seven days ago.'

'Jim, do you remember that we were en route to Paladas 3?' the doctor asked patiently.

'Civil war,' the captain murmured. 'I – think – '

'Don't worry, don't force it,' McCoy said. 'Jim, you've lost a bit of time. We went to Paladas 3 and you were injured there. You've been in a coma for a little while, and we just woke you up today. You're back on the ship. You're safe.'

The captain's forehead creased. 'I don't remember. Why don't I remember, Bones?'

'It's all right,' McCoy reassured him. 'It's not uncommon to blank out on some of the time before the coma. Now, Jim, I need to run a whole barrel of tests on you now you're awake. I want to do them now, and then you can get some sleep if you need it. Spock, could you leave us to it, and send Nurse Chapel in?'

Spock knew better than to argue at this time. He needed to get back to the bridge at any rate, but he could excuse his time down here since his presence had obviously helped the captain.

'I'll see you after my shift, Jim,' he promised, and then left the room.

He walked back to the bridge pensively, thinking both of Jim and the situation on the planet below. Officers Ndiaye and Gietz had both made impassioned pleas to him to try to improve the situation. Everybody who had been present on the ground and in the war zone was deeply shaken by the experience. It struck Spock as rather odd that humans had to experience warfare first hand in order to be able to empathise deeply with its victims, but whatever the motivation, there was a powerful push from all surviving members of the landing party to do something about this war as soon as possible. That struck Spock as rather odd, too, since there were literally hundreds of wars proceeding in hundreds of locations through the galaxy at this time, but again, it seemed that personal experience was needed to spur his human colleagues to action.

He took his seat on the bridge, still pensive, and slipped an earpiece into his ear, calling up a variety of information about wars past and present. He would have rather made use of the library computer at his usual station on the bridge, but since Chekov was in that position it was better to make do with the earpiece and a padd. At the same time he called up information on coma in humans, and the prognosis for recovery. He ran the information about wars through the earpiece and the information on coma through the padd. He wondered about the possibility of bringing in extra-terrestrial negotiators to Paladas 3, or of persuading a negotiator from another continent to step in. The war was largely based on ethnic differences, differences in religion and habit. The two ethnicities had been coexisting for many years, but tension had recently erupted and resulted in war. There was no chance of resettling one or the other of the ethnicities elsewhere. That had been proven to be disastrous in the past, at least in human and pre-Reformation Vulcan history. He had grown up exposed to a great deal of insight on diplomacy through his father's profession, but still he could not see clearly how to solve this problem. So few emotional peoples listened rationally to logic.

He touched the communicator button on the arm of his chair and said, 'Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye and Ensign Gietz, report to me on the bridge.'

After a few minutes both men were standing by the left side of the chair, waiting for him to speak.

'Commander, Ensign,' Spock said by way of greeting. 'You've both lodged separate reports emphasising the need for greater Federation intervention in the war on Paladas 3.'

Gietz nodded, and Ndiaye said quickly, 'Yes, sir, after what we saw down there – '

'I understand that you saw a greater swathe of the impact than the rest of the party, since you both also attended the local hospital,' Spock nodded. 'You are moved to action.'

'I think we all are, sir,' Ndiaye nodded, although Spock registered his slight uncertainty in how to answer, perhaps due to the fact that Vulcans could not be read as easily as humans.

'I assure you, Commander, that I found our time on Paladas 3 deeply troubling,' Spock told him. 'My culture is opposed to violence in all of its forms. I recognise the urgent need to act in regard to this situation. Our presence on the planet was the equivalent of applying a band aid to a haemorrhage.'

'Yes, sir!' Gietz put in, his youthful enthusiasm making him step forward a little. 'Exactly! A band aid on a haemorrhage. Sir, we need to get down there, we need to stop them fighting. The kids I saw in that hospital...'

Spock looked at him directly. 'How would you propose we stop them from fighting, Ensign?' he asked bluntly.

At that, Gietz flailed. 'I – I don't know. Beam up – we could beam up all their explosives. All their guns. Just take them away!'

'Would they not merely continue to fight with fists and blunt instruments?' Spock pointed out.

'Well, yes, maybe, sir,' Gietz nodded, seeming abashed. 'But – but they couldn't kill hundreds of people at a time, a hundred miles away. They couldn't rain bombs from the air.'

'Then this is your recommendation?' Spock asked seriously. 'That we use the _Enterprise_ 's transporters to remove all weapons from both sides?'

Gietz looked nervously at Ndiaye, and then back at Spock. 'Well, I – ' he began.

'Mr Gietz, can you think of any possible legal justification for such an act?'

'If stopping people killing each other isn't legal justification...'

'Unfortunately there is no such provision in the Starfleet mandate.'

'Sir, doesn't the Starfleet mandate say that we should attempt to preserve life at all costs?' Ndiaye asked innocently.

Spock rubbed his thumb against his lip. 'It does say that,' he nodded.

'The Prime Directive doesn't apply here,' the man continued. 'The world's governments have agreed to allow extra-planetary interference.'

'There are currently three Federation diplomatic teams en route to Paladas 3 with the intention of helping the situation on the ground there,' Spock pointed out.

'And how many will die while they're en route? Sir?' Ndiaye asked. 'I'd go down there and pull the guns out of their hands myself if I could. They can throw me out of Starfleet if they want. I don't care. I just want to see the killing end.'

'Yes, sir,' Gietz nodded. 'It's the same for me. These are lives we're talking about, not rules.'

For a moment Spock admired the two men's very human passion. He regarded the two of them. They were fine officers.

'Ndiaye, Gietz, I am putting you in charge of our response to the situation on Paladas 3,' he said finally. 'You are authorised to do whatever is allowable within the Starfleet mandate, and with reasonable use of _Enterprise_ resources. Dismissed.'

He saw the two men look at each other, their expressions looking as if they were sharing a secret that only the triangle of Spock and the two humans understood. Then they both nodded sharply and left the bridge.


	22. Chapter 22

'Spock, they'll be hung out to dry!' McCoy exclaimed. He paced across his small office, then back again, stopping in front of a cabinet and pulling out a bottle of Saurian brandy. It had been too long since he had tasted that sharp, dark liquor. He poured himself a small glass, thought for a moment, then poured out a similar amount for Spock.

Spock raised his hand, shaking his head.

'Oh, for God's sake, Spock, just drink with me,' McCoy urged him. 'It's not like it'll affect you. It's like water off a Denarian duck to you.'

He held out the glass again, insistently, and the Vulcan took it.

'You are fond of water metaphors tonight, Doctor,' he pointed out. 'Hung out to dry, water from a Denarian duck.'

'Hang the metaphors, Spock. I meant what I said. Do you know what'll happen when this gets back to Command?'

'When what gets back to Command, Doctor?' Spock asked smoothly.

McCoy spluttered over his drink. Spock hadn't touched his.

'When it gets back that Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye and Ensign Gietz ordered the beaming up of all explosives from a hundred mile radius around that Paladian city!' he said.

Spock sat down in a chair, leant back, and steepled his hands before his face.

'Ah,' he said. 'Doctor, do you have evidence that any explosives have been beamed onto the ship?'

McCoy goggled. Sometimes he felt like slapping the Vulcan. 'Spock, you must have been monitoring their communications! You must have heard the reports!'

'I have heard reports that explosives have disappeared from a hundred mile radius of Asbanar,' the Vulcan nodded. 'But I have heard no reports that we have beamed explosives onto the ship. That would be a grave safety and security risk, don't you agree?'

'Spock!' McCoy spluttered again. He downed a gulp of his drink so big it made him cough.

'Doctor, really,' Spock said.

'Spock, you're messing with me,' McCoy said in a low voice, trying to keep his temper. 'Now, would you care to explain – '

Spock picked up his own drink, examined it, and took a small swallow. Then he looked up at the doctor, raised one hand, and beckoned him close. McCoy grudgingly grabbed a chair and pulled it over towards the Vulcan.

'What is it, Spock? Spill.'

'Technically you have a duty as a doctor to keep confidences,' Spock began in a low voice. 'A duty which you would say supersedes your Starfleet oath. Technically, you are always on duty, and as such must hold medical conversations in strict confidence.'

'Technically,' McCoy said again. 'Yes, medical confidences...'

Spock extended his hand. 'Doctor, I have a small laceration on my finger,' he said.

McCoy bent over the fingers and saw that Spock was quite correct. There was a sore area at the side of his forefinger.

'You could do with some topical antiseptic on that,' he said critically.

Spock looked at him, an eyebrow raised, as if inviting a question.

'So – how'd it happen?' he asked.

'I assume we are speaking in complete medical confidence?' Spock asked.

'Uh – ' The doctor rose, went to get a small tube of antiseptic and a bandage, and sat back down. 'Okay, I'll bite. Yes, Spock. Complete medical confidence. Of course.'

'Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye requested my assistance with the transporter,' Spock said. 'The memory banks were faulty and required careful reprogramming. I cut my finger on the access panel.'

The doctor's eyes widened. He felt as if he had stumbled into a hornet's nest.

'You – had to reprogramme the transporter memory banks?' he asked, putting a small amount of the antiseptic on Spock's finger and covering it with an adhesive bandage.

'I did, Doctor,' Spock nodded.

McCoy could see he wasn't going to get much more directly from Spock, but the Vulcan's expression implied a certain hope that the doctor would make more assumptions.

'Well, if I wanted someone to fix computer memory banks – I mean, to fix them seamlessly, I'd go straight to you, Mr Spock,' he said. 'So – uh – I guess Ndiaye was using the transporters when the – problem – occurred?'

Spock lifted an eyebrow.

'He was using the transporters to beam up several tons of explosive,' McCoy continued.

The eyebrow rose sharply. 'Doctor, as I have stated, it would be quite contrary to safety and security regulations to transport such a large amount of explosive onto the ship.'

McCoy rubbed his hand over his mouth. 'So... Not onto the ship, then. Elsewhere on the planet, maybe... But where in hell could you dispose of that much explosive safely?'

Was Spock smirking? He almost thought he was.

'A theoretical _several tons_ of explosive would be impossible to dispose of safely without altering the molecular structure and rendering it inert, Doctor. Theoretically, the logical approach would be to convert the explosive into its separate elements and beam it in fine dispersal over the ocean. Theoretically, the substance would be rendered quite inert, and would be present in such trace amounts in the ocean as to cause no harm.'

'Theoretically,' McCoy echoed. 'And – uh – the transporter had issues with its memory banks, you say?'

Spock nodded. 'It did, Doctor. That is how I injured my finger.'

'It – uh – can be embarrassing to injure yourself during a simple task like that, Spock,' McCoy murmured.

'Embarrassment is alien to me, Doctor, but I am, of course, aware that a certain loss of respect can occur in the ranks if accidents of this nature are made public.'

'Of course, Spock,' McCoy nodded. 'You're quite right. But – uh – you know the local governing forces are spitting bricks over this, don't you?'

Spock's eyebrow tilted again. 'They are not, however, spitting lead projectiles, bombs, or shells, and are unlikely to be until Federation diplomats can reach the scene.'

McCoy harrumphed over his drink. 'Spock, the Organians have got nothing on you.'

' _I_ have done nothing but repair the transporter, Doctor,' Spock said smoothly.

'I don't know what Jim's going to say when he – ' McCoy began, and then stopped, brooding.

'Yes, the captain,' Spock nodded. 'He was asleep when I went in to visit him. How is Jim, Doctor?'

'Well, I've put him through all the brain function tests, Spock. I'm almost certain – as certain as I can be with the human brain – that he's going to make a full recovery. You know, the brain's an amazing thing. You can see it rewriting connections almost in real time.'

'Then there are connections which need rewriting?' Spock asked.

McCoy looked at him, registering real apprehension and concern in the Vulcan's face.

'It can take a long time to get over a brain injury, Spock. Jim's not going to be back on the bridge in a week's time like nothing happened. Yes, there was a small amount of cell death during the period he was without oxygen. He spent a long time in coma after that. You might see some personality changes – perhaps temporary, perhaps permanent.'

'That could interfere with his ability to captain the _Enterprise_ ,' Spock said gravely.

McCoy shrugged. He wished he could be omnipotent. He wished he could see into Jim's mind, predict the future, heal the damage. But no one could do that. Well, almost no one...

'There is a theory, Spock, that mind meld can help with brain injuries, that with proper guidance the plasticity of the brain can be taken advantage of. There are two schools of thought. One is that you need to top Vulcan healers for something like this. The other is that it's more important to have someone who knows the mind they're helping to heal, someone who's familiar with that person not only from the outside, but from previous melding experience.'

'I have that experience,' Spock said in his deep voice.

McCoy smiled. 'That you do, Spock.'

'And you believe it is safe for me to proceed with such an action?'

McCoy exhaled over his drink. 'With proper medical supervision, I think it is, Spock. You know Jim well enough. Of course you'd need to study all the medical texts first, but – '

'That should not take too long,' Spock opined.

McCoy harrumphed. 'For you, I guess it wouldn't. I can let you have access to the texts tonight, Spock. I think Jim will be up to a meld in a day or so. I want to be sure he's stable first.'

Spock nodded. 'That should be plenty of time.'

Once Spock was gone McCoy wandered back into Jim's room and slumped in one of the visitor's chairs. He had drunk too much to be able to interact with his friend medically, but he just wanted to spend a little time with him, to gauge how he was. He still held his half-empty glass of brandy, and turned it in his hands as he sat there watching Jim's sleeping face. It was incredible how a body seemed to bounce back sometimes. Jim was in no way at full health but he looked a long way from that cadaverous figure he had seemed while in coma. Just by sleeping naturally, with small natural movements that indicated dreaming, he looked more alive.

After a few minutes Jim turned fitfully, and then his eyes opened.

'Well, hi, Jim-boy,' McCoy said, smiling warmly.

The captain's eyes moved to the doctor's face, and then to the glass in his hand.

'Any chance I can have some of what you're having?' he asked. His voice still sounded a little slurred.

McCoy laughed. 'Uh-uh,' he said firmly. 'Not in your condition. And I'm not on duty, so don't ask me anything medical, either.'

'Are you _ever_ off duty, Bones?' Jim asked.

It was just such a relief to see intelligence and understanding in Jim's hazel eyes. McCoy had started to think he might never see that again.

'Well, I'm as off duty as I can be,' he admitted. He patted a hand to his pocket. 'Got a hypo of alcohol neutraliser if I need it, but for the moment I'm just enjoying the ride. It's not often I get to drink with Spock.'

It seemed slightly uncharacteristic of the captain that he didn't react to the news that Spock had been drinking. Instead he lay still and quiet for a while, before saying, 'You know, I think some of it's coming back to me. Paladas 3. An ongoing war. Ethnic divisions.'

'You think so, Jim?' McCoy asked him cautiously, aware that the captain might have picked up that much just from listening to the conversation around here.

'I think so,' Jim murmured. He moved one hand weakly from under the bedclothes, up to his chest. 'My heart. Did I have – some kind of injury to my heart?'

'Myocardial contusion,' McCoy nodded. 'You were starting to get better, but then we had to move, and you flat lined in the back of the truck. You know, Jim, I've never been so afraid I was going to lose you before. You and Spock both shortened my lifespan by about ten years with the scares you gave me.'

'Spock?' Jim asked, looking toward the door as if expecting to see the Vulcan there.

'Spock got shot through the arm. Damn near bled out on the ground,' McCoy said in a clipped voice. He took another mouthful of the brandy. He wasn't drunk enough for this, for remembering those moments that had terrified him on the planet.

Jim looked puzzled. 'Have I seen Spock since I woke up? I feel like – '

'He was there when we brought you round, helped calm you down,' McCoy told him. 'He came in to see you later, but you were asleep.'

'Yeah, I think I remember,' Jim said vaguely.

His hand clawed on the blankets, scratching it up into ridges under his palm. He glanced up at the monitor above his head, then the drip that was still attached to one arm, then the frosted glass window that let some light in from the ward.

'Bones, I – ' he began.

'What is it, Jim?' the doctor asked quietly.

'I – just feel – odd,' he said, as if he were grasping for words. 'I – don't feel like myself. Bones, do I have brain damage? What's wrong with me?'

He sounded honestly frightened, and his voice cut McCoy to the bone. The doctor put his glass down and reached out to put his hand over Jim's.

'It can take time to recover from a coma, Jim,' he said honestly. 'No, I don't think you have any permanent damage, but it's only time that will tell. I have to be honest with you. It'll be hard, and you'll struggle sometimes. But you are ten times better off than some people I've seen in this situation. And besides, you have Spock on your side. There are melding techniques – '

'Spock's not a doctor, Bones,' Kirk said rather shakily. 'Spock, in my mind... Can he help?'

'I think he can,' the doctor promised him. 'He's off right now reading up on all of the techniques for assisting healing in cases like this. He's going to try to help you set your brain back on the right track for healing.'

'I thought Mr Scott was the miracle worker here,' Kirk murmured.

McCoy snorted. 'I'd trust Scotty with my life with anything in the engine room,' he said, 'but with my brain – no. I'd rather have Spock in there any day.'

Jim raised his eyebrows, looking amazed. ' _Spock_? In _your_ brain? Really?'

The doctor shifted uncomfortably on his chair. 'Well, you know what I mean, Jim. Anyway.' He patted his friend on the arm. 'You ought to get some sleep. _I_ ought to get some sleep. Spock – now, _he's_ going to be staring at medical texts all night, you can bet his green blood on that, but us mere mortals aren't quite so hardy.' He swallowed the last dregs of his drink, then stood, and lifted the glass towards his captain. 'Sleep well, Jim.'

Jim looked back at him with a smile that was slightly weak on one side. 'Night, Bones.'


	23. Chapter 23

Spock's fingers were tight against Jim's face, pushing against the bone. There was the slightest sense of electricity in his fingertips as he let his thoughts flow into the human's. His breathing slowed, his eyes fluttered closed. He shut out the sick bay around, the presence of McCoy and Miss Chapel hovering nearby in case the meld should go wrong. All there was was Jim, Jim's thoughts, Jim's heartbeat slowing to mirror his own. This was a familiar landscape, but something had changed, like looking down upon a flooded valley and seeing the altered contours where the river obscured known boundaries.

 _Spock?_

He could feel Jim's fear. He embraced it, tried to rationalise it and subdue it. It wasn't the meld that Jim was afraid of. It was the damage that Spock might find, the chance that that damage might be impossible to fix. Jim felt lost in his own self. Spock projected reassurance. He would do his best. He had studied the texts thoroughly and understood the process. It was a question of identifying the more obvious problems and directing the brain toward the best way to fix it. The more subtle problems would most likely be beyond Spock's skill. At this moment, though, Jim needed positivity, and he shielded his doubts so carefully that his friend would not even be aware of the barriers around them.

He travelled deeper into Jim's mind, finding something of a block, an ugly blotch behind which were his memories of Paladas 3. He moved through it with him. The orders for the ship to go to the planet, for a promised team of medical aid to be sent to the worst of the fighting. Jim's reluctance to take his people into danger, but his following of what were reasonable orders. There was the knowledge that the Romulans had shown interest in the planet, that it was important those Vulcan offshoots did not find a foothold here, both for the sake of the Federation and the people of Paladas. Of course he wouldn't send his people into a situation that he himself would avoid, so he had beamed down too, with Spock at his side.

Then there was the explosion, wrapped about in a good deal of shock and fear, when Jim had been flung across a ruined street and slammed into a wall. A moment before the place had been quiet, and then the missile had come shrieking from the sky. He experienced the pain, with a human inability to control, and then the later frustration of being confined to bed and unable to help when help was desperately needed.

Spock left those memories aside and began to work carefully through the layers of Jim's mind, examining Jim's responses since waking from his coma, examining his frustrations and inabilities. It took hours of teasing through tiny individual responses; his small loss of muscle tone on one side of his body, his feelings of occasional anger and confusion, his exhaustion. Spock could not heal Jim for him, but he could gently nudge his brain on to the right track, helping him gain a subconscious understanding of how to reroute damaged connections.

Eventually he withdrew himself and let his hand drop, exhausted and trembling. He let his eyes focus and watched Jim slip back against the pillow, looking drained himself. Spock looked around, disoriented, trying to determine how long he had been in meld.

'About five hours, Spock,' McCoy said quietly, as if he had read the Vulcan's thoughts. 'No, you need to rest,' he said firmly as Spock looked towards the captain. 'I'll look after Jim.'

'Come on, Mr Spock,' Christine Chapel said firmly, touching a hand to his shoulder. Spock followed her obediently out of Jim's private room and into the ward, where the nurse indicated a bed and helped him lie back on it.

'I am not sick, Nurse,' Spock protested quietly.

She smiled. 'You are not sick, Mr Spock, but you're exhausted. Here.'

She lifted a thermo-lid from a bowl, and handed it to him.

'Plomeek soup, Miss Chapel?' Spock asked, one eyebrow rising in almost amused query. It was harder to keep his emotions entirely under control when he had been lost in a human's mind for so long.

'Well, it's supposed to be very rich in protein and helpful after taxing work,' she said with a rather embarrassed seeming shrug.

Spock took the bowl in slightly trembling hands. He remembered the last time the nurse had served him plomeek soup, and did not feel quite in a proper emotional state to deal with that memory.

'Thank you, Miss Chapel,' he said graciously. He was, in fact, quite hungry after the hours long meld. The nurse left him alone while he ate, and after he had set the bowl down he rested his head back on the pillow, just for a moment...

He woke suddenly, blinking into the semi-darkness of sick bay night. A blanket had been laid over his body, and the room was quiet. There was only the background hum of engine noise, almost imperceptible through the plating. Spock looked around, acknowledged that he was still tired, and sank back into sleep.

((O))

'Well, Spock, time to rise and shine!'

Spock opened his eyes at a clattering noise, to see McCoy standing over him with a metal bedpan in one hand and some kind of medical spatula in the other, hitting the pan as if it were a percussion instrument.

'Doctor, a quiet word would suffice,' he protested.

The doctor chuckled. 'Come on, sleeping beauty,' he said. 'It's an hour into your shift already. I shouldn't have let you sleep, but you looked so innocent lying there...'

Spock sat up abruptly, automatically checking the time against his internal time sense. McCoy was right. He was an hour late for his shift, and he had a headache.

'Relax, Spock,' the doctor said with a grin. 'I've signed you off bridge duty for medical reasons. Scotty's in control.'

Unusually for him, Spock relaxed. He was still tired and affected by yesterday's meld. He had to acknowledge that.

'How is the captain, Doctor?' he asked.

McCoy's smiled broadened. 'Jim's doing just fine, Spock. He was awake before you, you know. That slight weakness in his facial muscles is improving. He's felt less disoriented, and he now has full recall of the events leading up to his coma. I'd say you did good.'

'Indeed,' Spock murmured. Inwardly he felt pleased, not just because the captain was an efficient member of Starfleet, but because he was his friend. He pushed the blanket back and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. 'Is the captain allowed visitors?' he asked.

'Sure, Spock,' the doctor nodded. 'Just try not to tire him out. You helped him a lot, but don't forget he's still recovering from a brain injury.'

'I am unlikely to forget that,' Spock said solemnly.

He went through into the captain's room, where Jim was reclining on his bed with a real-paper book in his hand. Spock recognised it as one of the ones from his quarters. It was gratifying to see him so much better.

'Well, Spock, didn't we start out this way down on Paladas?' Jim asked with a grin as the Vulcan entered. 'Me confined to bed – and I bet Bones has told you not to discuss business.'

'The doctor has told me no such thing,' Spock confessed. 'He cautioned me not to tire you. That is all.'

A light lit in Kirk's eyes. 'Well...' he said.

Spock sat by the bed, feeling somewhat apprehensive. At some point Jim would learn about the mysterious disappearance of all explosives from the war torn area around Sanardo, and he was not entirely certain how the human would interpret those events. He turned on the computer near the bed, noticing that the arm was deliberately swivelled back away from Kirk's bed and out of his reach, and let his eyes run over the morning briefing, one eyebrow rising slightly at the events that had occurred while he had slept.

'Business, as you put it, is encouraging,' he said. As Jim reached out towards the computer arm Spock casually moved it a little further out of reach. 'The Romulans have dispersed due to the increased number of Starfleet ships in the vicinity. The Paladian Planetary Council have indicated a strong willingness to consider Federation membership. The war around Sanardo has – ' Spock cleared his throat, then continued, ' – has apparently quietened somewhat in recent days.'

Jim looked pleased at that. 'Quietened, Spock? Why do you think that is? Have they finally come to their senses, do you think?'

If he had been human, Spock would have harrumphed. 'Human-like races rarely do, Jim,' he confessed. 'I – I believe they have been encountering trouble sourcing the required munitions for warfare.'

Jim folded his arms across his chest and smiled. 'Well, however it's happened, it's got to be good, Mr Spock. I guess that means our job here is just about done?'

Spock glanced back to the briefing on the screen.

'Federation diplomatic ship _Aragon_ is two hours out of the system en route for the planet. Hospital ship _Nightingale_ is alongside. It's expected that orders will come through soon releasing us from our duties here.'

Jim exhaled. 'Well, you know, I feel like I've missed a lot, Spock.'

Spock's eyebrow rose. 'I should not feel regretful at that, Captain. Dr McCoy and I have recommended counselling for all those involved in landing party duty on Paladas 3 due to the extreme nature of the situation there.'

' _All_ those involved?' Jim asked. 'Even you, Spock?'

Spock frowned slightly. 'Vulcan mental disciplines should suffice for myself. However, humans are notably lacking in similar resources. Captain, I propose to put in a recommendation for Lieutenant Commander Ndiaye and Ensign Gietz to stay behind with the relief ships. They both show a strong desire to continuing helping on the planet.'

'Are you sure, Spock?' Jim asked, sitting up a little further. 'I don't like leaving my men behind.'

'I think in that case, Jim, perhaps they are no more _your_ men. They have seen too much to turn their backs.'

'Ndiaye's a good crewman,' Kirk mused. 'And Gietz shows a lot of promise. He reminds me a little of Chekov, you know.'

'All the more reason to let them flourish in their chosen field,' Spock nudged softly.

Jim looked at him with a sudden smile. 'You know, you're right, Spock. Yes, if you put in the recommendation, I'll sign it. I'll be happy to take them back if and when they want to.'

'The security field is notoriously flexible,' Spock nodded.

Jim snorted. 'That's one word for it, Spock. You know there's a kind of space-legend that putting on a red shirt is a death sentence.'

'Completely illogical,' Spock protested. 'Communications and engineering both wear red and are comparatively low risk fields. The danger is inherent in working in security, not in wearing a red tunic. But we are moving away from the point at hand. If you concur with my suggestion to transfer Ndiaye and Gietz I will start on the paperwork immediately.'

'You do that, Spock,' Jim said. 'I think I might sleep a bit.'

Spock nodded and got to his feet. 'Sleep well, Jim,' he said softly as he left, recognising again quite how close they had come to losing the captain, and the multitude of regrets he would have had that happened.

He left the sickbay and turned down the corridor, making for his quarters, where he would put the transfer orders in the computer and flag them for Kirk's attention. He had never liked the business of command, but he hoped that his time in charge would soon be over, if the meld had been successful. Jim's mind was ravaged by its injury and long unconsciousness, but he had set the wheels in motion for him to be able to manage his own healing.


	24. Chapter 24

A month had passed, and Paladas 3 was drifting far behind them in space, moving serenely in orbit of its white-yellow star. Reports suggested that the situation was improving, that Federation diplomats had made some progress in their work with native leaders on both sides of the conflict. It was unlikely that the majority of those radicalised fighters would listen to alien voices, but it was entirely possible that their more intelligent leaders might be swayed by the words of diplomats trained in conflict resolution, and that the leaders' changed attitudes could be passed on to the populace. The key, it seemed, was reducing prejudice and fear on both sides. The problem was beyond Spock – he could not understand why these irrational beings could not simply sit back and listen to reason – but, he supposed, that was why he was not a diplomat, and these people were. At times he felt in awe of his father, as one of this race of diplomats.

Spock signed a padd handed to him by a nervous looking ensign, then signed off on his own duties, and vacated the chair.

'Lieutenant Sulu, the conn is yours,' he said smoothly.

Without waiting for a reply, he left the bridge.

The captain was in the chair behind his desk when he opened the door to his first officer. A sheaf of discs were on the surface and there was tightly-packed text on his computer screen. He had been back on light duties for only a few days, and Spock frowned slightly at what looked like a vast amount of work spread over his desk.

'Jim, I thought the good doctor had instructed you – ' he began.

The captain turned the screen with one hand and increased the size of the font with the other, and Spock's eyes widened momentarily as he caught sight of the text there. It looked like part of a cheap romance novel.

'Christine Chapel sent it over,' Jim said with a smile, and at Spock's look of confusion added, 'It's kind of an in joke, Spock. Don't worry about it. To be honest it's not too bad. Makes a difference from Conrad and Melville. Good old pulp trash in pixels on a screen. It's light relief after staring at figures for the last hour.'

'I am almost certain the doctor instructed you not to look at screens for more than an hour,' Spock said sternly.

Jim flicked the monitor off carelessly. 'You're right, Spock. I was pushing myself. Wanted to see if I could manage it. I promise, I'll lay off the – what is it – Mills and Boon, I think the nurse said – and pick up Moby Dick again.'

Spock felt a ribbon of humour flick upward and then settle down again deep inside at the thought of Jim casting aside pulp romance for less arduous option of Hermann Melville. He sat down in the chair opposite Jim's and levelled his gaze at him.

'You are finding it difficult still?' he asked seriously.

Jim smiled. Spock could still see a very slight unevenness in that smile, something that would probably pass most people by completely. It relied on an intimate knowledge of the human's face, and a Vulcan level of scrutiny.

'Ah, it's not too bad,' Jim said, rubbing his hand briefly over his eyes as if they were tired. 'I just can't stare at the screen as long as I used to be able to. I can't do anything for as long as I used to be able to right now. No stamina.'

'It is improving,' Spock said, uncertain as to whether he was making a statement or asking a question.

'It is improving,' Jim nodded, 'and improving hand over fist compared to how it would have been without your help, Spock. It's just – I feel like a toddler, like I'm learning to live all over again,' he said, a slightly plaintive note edging his voice. 'I feel like I'm having to learn so many things anew.'

Spock nodded. It was hard for him to empathise, having never suffered a brain injury as Jim had, but he could certainly sympathise, and draw on what he had learned from the many melds they had shared in the last month in their joint quest to help Jim's brain heal.

'Are you ready for our chess game, Jim?' he asked, looking past his captain to the 3D board on the shelf behind him.

Jim gave a half-exasperated sigh. 'There you go, Spock. I'd completely forgotten. Did we arrange to play?'

Spock nodded solemnly. 'We agreed to a rematch last night. You said, and I quote, _Tomorrow I'm going to –_ ahem,' Spock cleared his throat, momentarily uncomfortable, before completing, ' _whoop your ass._ '

'I'll take your word for it, Spock,' Jim said. He twisted round for the board, and lifted it onto the table. 'So, I guess you beat me last night, then.'

'I did,' Spock nodded, saying nothing about Jim's lack of recall. The doctor had assured him that it was normal, and would improve. It was one of the reasons, along with his lack of stamina and a certain mood instability, why the captain was still not able to be on active duty. Thankfully in this day and age Jim's recovery was more likely to take a few months than the years that would have been more likely a few centuries ago.

He let the captain set up the pieces and move the first white pawn. Spock did not alter his strategy in deference to the captain's injury, and Jim had not won a match since he had been recovered enough to play. Spock felt that rather than being annoyed by being beaten, the captain appreciated that Spock was not humouring him by deliberately playing badly.

Tonight, however, he saw a marked improvement in the captain's strategies the further into the game they progressed. Spock said nothing and continued playing at his usual level, but inwardly he was pleased at this demonstration of the captain's recovery. Chess was a challenging game on many levels, and as a diagnostic tool for Jim's level of capability it was perfect. Tonight Jim's hands were steady, his mood was relatively stable, and his strategies were flawless.

'I still feel bad about them, though, Spock,' Jim said musingly as he moved his bishop down a level.

Spock quirked an eyebrow upward. 'About – _them_ – Jim?'

Kirk shook his head. 'Sorry, Spock. I mean Ndiaye and Gietz. They were good men.'

'And continue to be so,' Spock reminded him. 'They are considerably better men for their experience, and are putting that experience to good use.'

'I suppose it's the feeling I've abandoned them,' Jim mused. 'That we've abandoned them all.'

Spock shook his head. 'Illogical. We have left the situation in the hands of professionals trained specifically in the area of conflict resolution on the one hand and medical treatment on the other. The _Enterprise_ 's presence was only ever an intermediary solution. We were able to put a bandage on the problem, Jim, but not to heal it.'

'I guess so,' Jim murmured, his eyes on the board as Spock made his move. 'None of us were trained for what we saw down there. We had our eyes opened to a kind of warfare that we thought was unimaginable in this day and age.'

'Unimaginable to many member planets of the Federation,' Spock nodded. 'Not all.'

'No,' Jim said. 'No, I wish we could make it so that kind of experience was only ever found in fiction, in the pages of books. No living person should go through that.'

'The peoples of Earth had their own savage age, as did the peoples of Vulcan,' Spock pointed out. 'Perhaps the people of Paladas will find their own horrific experiences will spur them on to a future of peace and tolerance.'

'We can only hope,' Jim said wistfully.

Spock moved his rook and took one of Jim's pawns, slipping it quietly onto the desk. 'Check,' he said smoothly.

A week ago Jim would have been baffled by the problem that Spock presented, but tonight the captain deftly moved a bishop up a level to take Spock's pawn, and smiled.

'I have been following Commander Ndiaye and Lieutenant Gietz's progress,' Spock said.

'I thought he was an ensign?' Jim asked, looking confused. 'I guess my brain's playing up again...'

'No, I put in a recommendation for promotion, and it was accepted by Command,' Spock told him. 'Ndiaye is now a full commander, and Gietz a lieutenant. They both showed their aptitude in the field, and their removal from the _Enterprise_ makes the increase in rank rather easier since they don't need to fit into the closed rank structure of the ship.'

'Well, I approve,' Jim nodded. 'So, what about their progress?'

'The pair have been instrumental in helping the diplomatic teams liaise with leaders on both sides of the conflict, due to their prior experience on the planet. They've also put a number of – rather more unconventional strategies into place...'

'Unconventional strategies?' Jim echoed. 'You know, Spock, I haven't looked into it – I didn't dare – but I get the feeling that pair had something to do with the mysterious disappearance of armaments from the area of conflict...'

Spock's eyebrow rose. 'I wouldn't advise you to look into it,' he said smoothly. 'But it is a fact that both sides have had continued difficulty in sourcing weaponry and explosives, and because of that casualties have been reduced by seventy-five percent.'

'Is it that simple, Spock?' Jim asked wistfully. 'Take away their bombs, and they stop killing one another?'

Spock shook his head. 'If one takes away bombs and guns it may be that they will attempt to kill one another with their bare hands – but one cannot kill dozens at a time with one's bare hands. It may slow the killing long enough to help diffuse the hatred.'

Jim moved his queen up to the top level, and abruptly said, 'Check – and mate, I think, Spock.'

Spock sat back in his chair and considered the board before him, scanning his eyes over the pieces and judging each available move. There was nothing that would save his king from danger. Jim did, indeed, have him mated. He reached out his hand and toppled over the black king.

'You didn't let me win that, did you, Spock?' Jim asked doubtfully, eyeing the board.

Spock met his eyes with complete honesty. 'I did not let you win. I played at my usual level, and you beat me.'

Jim carried on gazing at the pieces for a few more moments, then swept them all off the board neatly into their box, and closed the lid. His look of satisfaction seemed to warm the air in the room.

'If only all conflicts were as orderly as chess,' Jim commented wistfully.

Spock thought back to the situation on Paladas, to the dust and the mud, the screaming projectiles filling the sky, the torn lives and shattered buildings on the planet surface below. Then he remembered the war they had encountered on Eminiar 7, where that horror and violence had been removed entirely, and men and women had walked willingly into disintegration chambers to continue their bizarre charade of warfare. That very clean war had been prolonged by five centuries almost entirely because horror and destruction were kept to a minimum. Lives were lost cleanly and clinically, grief was processed as a way of life. All planets needed their savage eras, it seemed, and Paladas was working through its own. Much like individuals, cultures grew up, cast aside savagery and prejudice, and learnt to live with one another. Paladas would do the same, in time. With the help of men like Ndiaye and Gietz, perhaps they would learn to do it more quickly than otherwise. And meanwhile, insignificant to the populace of Paladas but very significant to four hundred and thirty crew members here in space, Jim Kirk would grow better and return to his own very adult role as the captain of the _Enterprise,_ Spock would return to his comfortable position as second in command, and perhaps, for a while, all would be well.


End file.
